


The Last Two Tours

by rushedwords



Series: Dog Tags & Rings [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Open Relationships, Things Get Better, but later, ignores Into Darkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2511683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rushedwords/pseuds/rushedwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years at the academy as best friends turned into ten years in the black as something more. It is a series of up and downs, of happiness and sadness as Jim and Bones share their lives with each other aboard the starship Enterprise. The Last Two Tours is a story told in two opposing timelines - Jim's which progresses forward in time and McCoy's which goes backwards in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Run Away (Like It's Simple)

**Year Ten - June 2268**  
He is a doctor, not a poet. In fact there probably isn’t a universe, parallel or otherwise, in which he is a poet because Leonard Horatio McCoy has always been a man of science. Although maybe there are a handful of universes where he was at least more inclined to read poetry. And perhaps in those universes where he reads poetry instead of medical journals Leonard McCoy knows that it would end not in a bang, but with a whimper. Then again, maybe in those universes he believes that he could be The Passionate Shepherd writing to his Love. Where they could have just lived together, taking delight in an expanding universe’s wealth of beauty, nothing but possibilities, excitement, and effortless comfort ahead of them.   
  
But who is he kidding? He has always the cynical Nymph. Who doubts and knows that flowers fade and things don’t always work out. Hell, he lost the damn planet the first time around. Now he is losing the stars as well. The real irony is that rather than relief to soon be back on solid ground indefinitely, all he feels is a notable emptiness in the pit of his stomach.   
  
There had been a note along with an unassuming ring, without its companion chain like it should have been, waiting for him in their quarters. Typically the ring is kept around Jim’s neck, tucked away under his tunic the same way soldiers centuries ago might have worn dog tags – although Jim has those too. It was never a shout from the rooftops sort of thing, Jim and Bones had never been into that sort of spectacle or even conventions for that matter. And yet, the damn fool actually left a pen and paper sort of note on the now empty night table next to the bed, which seems to have stopped being theirs.   
  
It isn’t an uncommon sight. Jim Kirk liked the feel of parchment and the smell of ink for certain things. He had always said that data bytes left something to be wanting when it came to the big stuff. That it was more personal to see the familiar loops of his handwriting, knowing that thought and texture went into writing it rather than a few mashed keys. Of course Bones had always just grumbled about the absurdity of paper notes even as they filled him with a sort of unnamable joy – not because he didn’t know what it was called, but simply because naming things made them more real and more readily lost.   
  
However, today it has a million names and pokes at still tender wounds.  
  
This letter will be the last that Jim would ever write him. Even knowing it was coming the realization hits him like an elephant gun leaving the past decade splatter across a bedroom that has lost its meaning.   
  
“It’s over,” he says. McCoy isn’t sure how often he has repeated those words in the past couple of days. If he were being more honest he would expand that to the past couple of months because maybe it had always been coming to this moment. They had been drifting apart. (And maybe he can name the moment it started, but he doesn’t want to. Not yet.)   
  
It still doesn’t truly sink in until he feels the weight of parchment and ink in his hands. Jim Kirk has always been the black hole in their celestial pair. McCoy orbiting around at faster and faster speeds to stop from falling in as Jim expanded consuming more matter it would be inevitable, it had always been. He would be swallowed whole. On some level he knew it, even as he sat down next to him on the shuttle and threatened to throw up on him, and without a doubt when he snuck him onto Enterprise. (Only in those moments he thought that would be a good thing and maybe in some ways it was.)  
  
The delicate paper wrinkles in his hand as he presses his fist against his chest to cover the scars there. Those are the ones no one will see, much less understand. His heart has always been fragile. How many times in the 13 damn years of knowing the man-child did he proclaim that he was a broken man? Or that he had been so careful because he didn’t want to go through it all again? Jim was the one who leapt without looking, who pushed Bones to do the same.  
  
(“C’mon Bones, think what you could miss out on!”   
  
“Years of heartache,” had been the bitter drunken answer when pressed. It wasn’t even ironically funny that he was right.)   
  
He collapses into the chair across the room, the half-made bed – once their half-made bed – not quite out of sight. A bed that now smells of Jim and something not entirely unfamiliar, something a bit too flowerily to belong to either man, but it isn’t just the scent. It is the stack of lies that came with it.   
  
And his heart breaks just a little more because there had been good memories in that bed that feel ruined now. Early mornings of matted bed sheets, keeping arms and legs stuck together, chests rising and falling in sync ,or of late nights after even longer days falling together in breathy laughter and a playful glint that no man in his thirties should have. Blue eyes blown wide with every single emotion coursing through his body.   
  
“God he was beautiful then.” The words slip from him like a eulogy that he is far too sober to recite. It’s not for the man, but for the quiet, hidden moments that only exist between the two of them.   
  
For a moment he allows his mind to wander and for his imagination to put all the pieces of them back in this room. The pictures of two idiots in cadet reds (even if they weren’t technically cadets at that moment) a bit less sober than they ought to be for nine in the morning or them down in Georgia on the rare leave where he actually got to see his baby. In those moments the emotions and love he so carefully guarded shines from him in big honest smiles because all the pieces of his life fit together.   
  
Now that life is a million pieces. McCoy is retreating back to Earth, to a daughter who only knew him through semi-regular calls and the random shore leave spread throughout the years. A daughter, now an adult in her own right, who has no real need for a father and certainly not one who had missed out on all the big moments of her life because he always loved Jim just a bit more. It’s hardly a life, but it is all he has.   
  
Jim, who he had seen only briefly last night when he stopped by sickbay to speak with Chapel about her new posting for the next tour. It was like nothing had happened. Captain James T. Kirk was already making plans for the ship’s retrofitting, dreaming of the next big adventure because it would always be another five years for Jim Kirk. He was born in the stars and he would die there as well.   
  
What really hurt was seeing how Jim could go on so easily without him when he was barely keeping it together to finish inventory before they docked at the Jupiter Station. Their eyes had met briefly as the Captain was leaving. Instead of love or even teasing all McCoy could see were the secrets that had put miles between them. The miles would eventually become light years without any effort. Not that the distance would make it any easier.   
  
Jim would have the stars, Jocelyn the damn planet, and through some clause in his contract and nowhere else to go, he would begrudgingly have San Francisco and soon impressionable fourth class cadets and young doctors to teach about the dangers and diseases of space, to mold into future starship doctors and nurses. Joanna would be among them. Not that it would be enough. Nothing would ever be enough to fill this hole and to fully recover from this loss.   
  
“Transporter room to McCoy,” chirps the comm. at his side forcing him to pause the self-pity just a moment. At least he doesn’t have to blink back tears or try to compose himself because there’s simply nothing left.   
  
“McCoy here.”   
  
“We’re ready to transport.” He can hear the murmurs that go unspoken. Leonard McCoy is many things, but stupid or ignorant have never been one of them. He knows that the pointedly polite Scotsman on the other end had a sizeable pool over when the Captain and the Doctor would stop playing house after one too many fights in the ready room. (Hell, if he was smart, he would have got in on it and at least made it out with a few credits.)  
  
At least from here on out he won’t have to wade through the turbulent waters of shipwide gossip. It will still go on, just like Jim will, with all of his adventures, but it won’t be his anymore.   
  
“Yeah. I’m on my way.”   
  
He takes one last look around the room. Even empty this place is haunted with their past. McCoy knows it always will be, at least in his mind where he’ll carry it around forever. Although he’s sure among Jim’s endless plans are ones to paint over the ghosts this room holds like he’s painted over all the others in his life (because that was how Jim survived and fond the strength to keep going).   
  
Finally, he removes the class ring that has sat on his pinky finger for so long it might as well be an extension of his person. He sets it down on the nightstand right next to Jim’s ring. They are pair. They belong together even if the people who wore them don’t anymore. His next words slip out in one long exhale. “McCoy out.”


	2. Someone Like you

**Year One - Winter 2258**  
Jim Kirk likes sex. That has never been a secret. He likes the physical connection, the chemical reactions, and mutual gratification.   
  
He’s fifteen the first time he has sex – although he claims to be seventeen. She’s an older woman, which at fifteen means she’s nearly twenty with glasses and her thick curly hair swept back in a bun. She’s careful with him and he has no clue what he’s really doing but he muddles through with a sort of exuberance appropriate for a fifteen year old. It’s not fantastic because he comes too soon, but when he collapses next to her, enjoying her body heat for a few minutes, it pushes away all the ghosts, covering some of the scars that he carries. He holds onto that feeling, allowing it to take him through a bad week at home because the Winona’s current boyfriend feels threatened by a fifteen year old who doesn’t know how to sit still.   
  
The truth is that sex calms him because it offers a constant in a life where the moveable parts keep changing too quickly. So, soon it’s a handful of partners – women, men, and even one alien who don’t believe in those sorts of categories. His partners are always willing and gone before the start of the next day. For a few years they heal him or at least slap some bandages on bullet holes, but they get him to a place where Captain Pike can dare him to become something better.   
  
And while it’s Pike that gets him on that ship, it’s a doctor who smells like bad intentions, whose wild eyebrows tell Jim he’s really not kidding about the throwing up thing that get him through the rest. It’s also a doctor who makes him pause in the constant treading of water that keeps him afloat. For the first time in his life he feels like he can’t quite catch his breath and it doesn’t send him running.   
  
So, it’s not surprise that their friendship outlasts all of his partners together.   
  
It doesn’t hurt they are two men who no matter how the system, the Academy tries, they don’t break, even if they might bend.   
  
They have been here before. And they both know they’ll be here again. It’s a basic staple of the friendship. Sometimes Jim stays in content to study in silence along side Bones, but other times if his leave allows he gives in to the itch to go out, to find that tactile reassurance of his place in the world. Most of the time it’s sex, which is safer than the fights he used to spoil for, but sometimes fists and blood are more rewarding than orgasms especially when his birthday and the anniversary of the Kelvin are too fresh on his mind. And almost all of the time he can hear his head Bones bitching and grumbling about his choices the whole time.   
  
“Bones,” it’s a whine tonight as he lets himself into his friend’s room well before curfew, but still late enough.  
  
The man in question is double-checking his emergency med kit and laying out clothes for a quick change if he gets called into the hospital in the middle of the night. It’s something he’s done every night since med school, or at least he told Jim as much once. Jim finds that he likes the routine because it means that Bones will always be ready to take care of him when he stumbled in at some unspeakable hour. Not that he’s that egotistical to think it’s all about him, but it’s a nice thought.   
  
“What the hell, kid?” His voice is gravelly which tells Jim it’s been a long day and he probably has some bullshit exam in the morning and really just wants to go to sleep. But then again, that’s basically how Bones greets him almost all of the time. “You look like a walking sore.”  
  
And he does, so he doesn’t say anything. Jim just shrugs out of some of his top layers and inches across the room to plop down on the rack. They both know that Jim can’t afford any more demerits even if they are technically on leave at the moment, but the Academy hasn’t cared in the past.   
  
“You gonna fix me?” While his words are tired, they are also playful in a way that is so Jim that it can’t be properly described – although Bones might call it foolish arrogance and an oversized ego.   
  
“I think I’ll let you suffer a little first.” Bones continues on with his routine. He looks at Jim when he thinks the other man isn’t watching. What he doesn’t realize is that Jim is always watching him.   
  
Rather than protest, Jim just starts naming items in his immediate line of sight in as many languages as he can think of just to pass the time. When he runs out of words for rug he speaks up. “I think I may be bleeding on your rack.”  
  
That gets Bones’s attention well enough and he sets to work. It’s a dance he’s done so much that he has a container of medical supplies near his bed that might as well ‘for when Jim Kirk proves he’s a stupid ass.’ And like a good doctor he makes sure the cure he gives stings just a bit more than it really needs to and he bitches the entire time.   
  
In his stupor Jim tires not to think about how close their bodies are. About how the callous, but nimble fingers on his skin are so different than the dozens of other people who have touched him. His mind points out that none of them have touched them like this. His cloudy blue eyes stare at Bones, looking closely, almost through the other man, trying to make out what the hazel eyes with little flecks of gold are telling him.   
  
As Bones is putting the regen away, Jim stops him placing his hands on either side of the other man’s face. He doesn’t say anything for a moment; both of them too shocked by the proximity to really find words. Just before Bones pulls away Jim just smiles and says “Thanks, Doc.” To which Bones just grumbles and tidies up his supplies.  
  
For a man who claimed to hate space, Bones has always served as Jim’s Polaris.   
  
  
 **Year One - Spring 2258**  
It’s hours or maybe days after Enterprise has limped back to space dock after being in time to save one planet, but not quite quick enough to save the first. Time all seems to blend together at this point. The hours are filled with a swirl of Admirals and words in unrelenting plain face text. It is hours spent talking that leave his voice hoarse and wishing for a swig or three of Jack, and Bones’s rack to crash on because the medical housing has better racks than the standard cadet dorms and no roommates – or at least that’s the excuse his mind keeps giving him.   
  
Today is no different. It’s been another long day trying to sit still and reliving those 42 hours he knows he won’t soon forget. The difference is that instead of collapsing in Bones’s room, he’s struggling to keep himself upright in his own. There’s nothing familiar about this room. They make him switch every six months and the rooms all look about the same because it’s not like Jim Kirk has many material items to make it feel like home. (Although the room does feel noticeably different now that the roommate he never really saw – Paul Higgins – will never be seen again, listed among the dead on the Farragut.)   
  
His comm. beeps playing some idle tune that it shouldn’t be able to play to let him know he has a message from Bones. Unwittingly everything feels a bit lighter and a little bit better, even if it’s just a quick message:  _Boyce made us review the vids again. I’m officially swearing off spaghetti. And crustaceans. Drinks later?_    
  
Jim tried to hide his sudden mood change with a hearty swallow of hops, but he’s not nearly quick enough.   
  
“You’re in love with him,” she says like it’s not an accusation.   
  
And for all his charm, all he can do is laugh and take another pull from the room temperature beer in his hands. She might not have been around all the time while he was growing up, but Winona Kirk knew her son.   
  
Neither speaks for a long while. Jim is suddenly more interested in peeling the label off the bottle than the grenade his mom just threw at him. His brain doesn’t even know where to start trying to process those words. And not because it’s unfounded or a sudden realization, but because he didn’t want to believe it before but if she can see it, well, then he might have to.   
  
“I think I might be,” he says like he’s not ashamed.  
  
Winona sighs because what else can a mother do? Her son is a celebrated hero not unlike her late husband. At least Jim came back with the ability to be stressed over the debriefings and all the unwanted press attention.   
  
He might look like his father, but he gets his mind from his mother and he doesn’t miss the shift in her expression. And the anger starts to boil because he’s just figuring out this feeling in his gut might be love and his mother looks like she’s about to try to talk him out of it. And while he’s never needed her before, he needs her support this time.  
  
“I just want you to be happy, Jim,” she says before he can explode at her. “I know your childhood wasn’t the best, thanks in part to me, but…” Winona pauses taking a sip from her equally warm beer. “I know we’ve come a long way, but there are still places where two men together is going to bring trouble. And Leonard, from what I know of him, from what I know about you…” she shakes her head well aware she’s talking herself into a corner, so she hedges, “nothing about it is going to be easy.”  
  
Jim can hear what she doesn’t say. How her own heart is breaking again in a completely new way and how she wants to protect him from that. But she’s never been much of a mother before so what really gave her any right now?  
  
“I know,” he says it like he means it. His eyes, so blue and earnest, look up to meet hers, more grey than blue like an ocean constantly uneasy. “Mom, I know.” And he does. So he starts scheming because the world nearly ended and he’s in love with his best friend. Something needs to be done about this.   
  
Their first official date wasn't so much of a date as it is two men not as drunk as they are pretending falling into bed together after another day of funerals. Jim doesn’t even want to pause to wrap his head around how many he couldn’t save because it was a whole planet and almost all the first and second class cadets. Instead he wants to wrap himself around something familiar that he might have loved for a long time.   
  
It’s a comfort he needs then, just as much as Bones does. So, they stumble together. It is a bundle of nerves and second-guessing, despite the fact that over the years they have peeled away the layers until it feels like there can be no more surprises left. And yet, it’s still bumping noses and awkward positions and ‘no, don’t put your leg there,’ ‘here, like this’ and of course the grumble turned moan of ‘damn it, Jim.’   
  
There is no great celestial harmony of the universe finally falling into place, but rather a dissonance of limbs and good intentions with the promise that this could be something great.   
  
He doesn’t have to tell Bones that he knows the man is broken or that he understands the feeling because quite honestly he’s more petrified of this than the chatter that he’ll be named captain in a few days. But those words are there in his motions. Just as the hints of what he can’t even admit to himself like how while he never quite shared his mother’s enthusiasm for children or any sort of relationship, he always hoped in that way that people hope with the burden of fear that he would find it along the way.   
  
The stars, which he always wanted to explore, are a lonely place, and while he could exist on his own he was never all that good at it. But he knows, just as sure as his fingers can’t seem to touch enough skin, that his body can’t seem to be close enough to Bones until he’s consumed by the other man, that he doesn’t have to be lonely anymore. Jim Kirk has been waiting his whole life for someone like Leonard McCoy and he’s beyond grateful The Ex was stupid enough to let him go.   
  
Sure, he has cracks and places where he might crumble. But to Jim, Leonard McCoy has always been something strong to lean on, bones to hold him up and the determination to pull him through everything else along the way.


	3. So Whatever

**Year Ten - February 2268**  
The real irony is the planet is beautiful. It’s fully terra formed and filled with god honest liquor, beds with mattresses that don’t sag in the middle, and thread counts so high he doesn’t even bother to ask. It’s perfect, except in the way it’s not because it’s not where he wants to be. It’s some new world in the beta quadrant where two planets over Enterprise had to warp over and intervene a decades old civil war in the hopes of getting mining rights in exchange for saving not one but two races of sentient beings. If they got rerouted here at any other time he would have enjoyed it, dragged Jim out on those animals that look like horses, and disappeared for the day.   
  
Instead, he waited just until Jim was awake enough and not about to die again to rip him a new one. Once that was out of his system he stormed off without his communicator because he didn’t want to be found – certainly not by arrogant, cocky starship captains. McCoy just needed some space.  
  
Even three days later he can still feel the tremble in his hands. Jim had died on his table before. But this time it was 53 excruciating seconds and just after he had told the fool that he shouldn’t be beaming down because he was still recovering from the last ‘diplomatic’ mission. And really Jim wasn’t 25 anymore. His body didn’t just rebound that way it used to at 34.   
  
McCoy was getting old too. His hair was starting to gray around the edges, but his daddy had gone gray by forty. He isn’t quite there yet, but he feels older. Not that it comes as a surprise, for as much as Jim got them out of trouble he put himself through a lot in the process. Some days McCoy doubted the kid would ever grow up in an endearing sort of way. But most of the time now, it is all just too much.  
  
And this week has been a really long version of one of those days. At least storming off found him some peaceful span of land with no one to bother him for miles. It is exactly the sort of place Jim would have loved. It even came with a remote dock overlooking water that wasn’t quite blue with a nearly yellow sun beating down on him.   
  
Leaning back on the dock he looks up at the horizon. Just as he’s settling in to an afternoon with nothing but the waves and the intention to let go of the anger from the past few days enough to not explode, he hears someone approaching. McCoy doesn’t need to look back to know that pattern of footsteps is Jim coming with his tail between his legs.   
  
“I can’t believe you found me,” he says like they had some variation of this conversation a dozen times before. (And maybe they have.)  
  
Jim shrugs and sits down next to him. Neither of them can stop the hint of smiles on their faces because there is still that desperate hope and want for this to be better, to be like it was, because it was good once. However, it doesn’t quite fit the way it used to anymore.   
  
McCoy is uneasy over the familiar, but slightly detached gaze of his partner. His shoulders are tight around his neck again. The tension between them clings like the fog over a Bay hundreds of light years away. And McCoy would even rather be there because it would closer to home, or really closer to Joanna.  
  
“I wore the plaid,” he says pulling at the shirt in question. Technically it is his shore leave, so in place of blue tunics and regulation trousers it is his favorite flannel and a pair of well-worn jeans that help him put some space between the man and the title. He might always be a doctor, but sometimes he needs a break from being a lieutenant commander. “Although I left the axe back at the log cabin.” It’s a bad joke, but filled with good intent. Jim is the one supposed to make it, but he’s not saying anything.   
  
Instead of the lecherous curl of his mouth that promises a tumble into foreplay, McCoy laughs nervously. It is anything to fill the silence. McCoy shakes his head, and the sheer awkwardness has Jim laughing too – the sort of belly full laughter that dances across his eyes.   
  
As beginnings go it’s small at best, but carefully they are falling back into each other, erasing the jarred edges and awkward angles or at least trying to. They are still fighting for this. And a part of his mind, that small almost non-existent hopeful part that was taken along with everything else almost over ten years ago, tells McCoy that they’re going to be okay.   
  
Tentative as it is, Jim reaches over to touch McCoy, to allow his fingers the delight of familiar lines of comfort and love. For the moment he’s forgotten about the almost dying part, but even in the 23rd century surgical scars take time to heal, so Jim winces. And the hope in McCoy’s gut fades when they both flinch away from each other at the same moment.  
  
  
 **Year One - September 2258**  
The first few months of the first tour were something to behold. Bones working himself down to the…well down to the bones, and Jim so caught up in this new domain everything else seems to fade away for long intervals. For those dozen weeks he is in love with everything. True, he might have trouble saying those words out loud, but anyone could see the depth that he did love. Although he suspects that only those who really look can see his yearning to be loved in return. (And it’s not for a lack of a love as a child, but rather an insatiable need for more.) It comes off as a tangible excitement that no one can ignore. The problem is that most people misread it as insolence or arrogance.   
  
So, of course the first away mission goes wrong – or at least not wrong as much as Jim puts himself in front of a phaser shot rather than allow Ensign Yang to take the hit like he is supposed to in his duty to protect the captain. Bones calls it stupidity and Jim just looks at him and laughs knowing that they are both self-destructive, just in different ways. The doctor doesn’t stay to treat him, it’s a minor injury and even Jim insists that Ensign Williams whose insides are on the outside needs Bones more. Besides, Chapel is more than capable and it doesn’t hurt that she is nice to look at.   
  
Even sitting in sickbay after he’s been told multiple times to sit still, he can’t. Jim always finds some way to fidget. And when his physical movement is hampered there are tales to regale any captive audience with. Chapel’s willingness to listen isn’t probably as great as Jim thinks it is, but she has to treat him, which means she has to listen to him.   
  
“And then I rolled out of the way, picked up my phaser and landed one right between the eyes.” His voice is breathless, which probably has more to do with bruised ribs than his excitement, but it all feels the same anyway. “It was just brilliant.”  
  
While the words stop for a moment, Jim looks up at Chapel with a big smirk. “You know, you’re just as no fun as Bones sometimes, which is shame because you’re prettier than him.”  
  
Chapel just shakes her head and doesn’t look up from the regenerator humming under her careful touch. At least Bones would have rolled his eyes and grumbled, which was exactly what Jim is aiming for. Rather than be annoyed at the fact that Chapel doesn’t give him what he wants makes this even more of a game now.   
  
  
 **Year Ten - February 2268**  
McCoy sighs. There are words for this, words that don’t lead to fighting – or at least he hopes there are because he’s tired of fighting, tired of pushing for Jim to slow down and enjoy what they have. But he can’t quite find them, so he settles for others.   
  
“Hell, kid, I think we both know what could be better.” Jim doesn’t look up from the water. His gaze is fixed on the tiny waves and strange life forms underneath. “You have a death wish, and I’m a grumpy bastard who cares too much. I can own when I’m wrong, Jim.”   
  
It’s the use of his name that gets the younger man to peek up over at the doctor. In that moment he’s a deer stalled in the road with bright lights in the distance getting closer.  
  
“But, shit, with everything we’ve gone through, we’ve always come out stronger for it.” And he says those words like he wants to believe them, like they are not just another in a long line of lies and half-truths that have kept them stitched together for a while now. “So how about we just start again the rest of the week and see where it goes from there?” It’s far from an apology, but McCoy doesn’t think Jim deserves one. Still, at the very least he can offer a truce.  
  
A part of him wonders how Spock and Uhura manage, not just over the length of their time in space, but even at the Academy. The easy answer his mind gives is about a fundamental lacking between he and Jim – namely that neither had a woman’s intuition or a Vulcan’s patience and emotional control.   
  
Even the ‘morning gossip sessions,’ as Jim calls them, when McCoy and Nyota share a sink never give him concrete answers. Between the two of them they know every damn thing happening on the ship, but not the details of the quarters that are connected to the shared head.   
  
Although he suspects that she knows more than she lets on because he and Jim have never been particularly discrete or tactful when it comes to their relationship especially among friends. They might not yell it from the catwalks in engineering, but whether a good day or bad day between them it’s telegraphed in all of their interactions, coloring them for better or worse. It is never just a fight between them, but rather something for the rest of the crew to chatter on about unlike the  _top secret, highly classified relationship_  between the lady and the Vulcan – yes, a fundamental lacking but never one that overtly affected productivity.   
  
McCoy didn’t believe that it was all sunshine and puppies for the Spock and Uhura, but in comparison it could be. Even with all the baggage Spock and Uhura carried together (which was comparable to his and Jim’s) they never appeared to falter. Their relationship always reminded McCoy of his grandparents and much in the same fashion he didn’t think too deeply on it because then he might have to consider what sex between them might be like and those are never thoughts he wants even if they did hold the secrets to success.   
  
So without the secrets or even instructions on how to make this work, all he can do it guess and keep trying because he does still want it (or at least he thinks he does because he has nothing else).   
  
Jim smiles again and leans toward McCoy with more deliberateness to avoid further pain and for that McCoy is grateful. (If he doesn’t see the injury, he can forget that it exists for a moment and just enjoy Jim.) The kiss is brief, more like a greeting between two estranged friends than two men who have wrapped over a decade of their lives together, but it progresses. In the span of seconds they seem to review the length of their courtship or perhaps more accurately what their courtship might have been like if they were at all conventional at how they began. (But neither of them ever cared much for beginnings, and are slowly proving that their endings would be long drawn out affairs that left a bad taste in your mouth.)   
  
“I have to back on the ship by morning.” It’s a whisper in a calm, removed tone. In the past Jim’s eyes might have darted up to gauge the reaction, but today they stay focused on McCoy’s lips. It’s pure cowardice, but when he knows what’s coming it’s the only thing he can to try and preserve.   
  
The doctor doesn’t bother to hide his disappointment, his whole body slumps forward, finally given into the force of gravity. (When Jim stopped being his gravitational well he’s not sure, but he doesn’t have the patience to deal with that right now). He can hear the other man preparing to launch into some ramble of platitudes.  
  
“Look,” he starts, “whatever, we’ll have tonight.” And it’s not so much a compromise but a desperate plea.  
  
  
 **Year One - October 2258**  
Jim Kirk loves his ship. And by extension he loves 296 members of the crew on it because without them his girl would be dead in the water. (And sure he may love a certain doctor a bit more than the others, but no one is really calling him on it because they know better.) He sometimes wanders the corridors late into gamma shift, hands tracing over her metal lines and writing her all sorts of poetry.   
  
This is his. Even with all the reports and protocol he had to worry about, Jim Kirk has a place that is without a doubt a home and a great big extended family to take care of. The fact that Bones was also a part of his ship was just plus.   
  
And he exhales, the long exhale of a man who after years of searching has finally found exactly what he was always looking for.   
  
  
 **Year Ten - February 2268**  
It is some time later. The nearly yellow sun is setting over the horizon in a way that might have been beautiful if not for the storm brewing in his head. McCoy wants to share in this with Jim. Although more so he wants to be watching his baby girl graduate like he thought he was going to be able to do. Now, he can’t have that and he can’t really have Jim. Not anymore.   
  
“You know what makes me crazy?” He doesn’t know if he can say these things, but knows that if he doesn’t he might well combust. And even as familiar as this moment is, he knows it needs to happen before they destroy more things along the way. “We could be here together, away from that bucket, on solid ground with real food and you are always going to chose her.”  
  
Jim moves to protest, but McCoy throws up his hand letting the other man know he’s not finished (although he may well be done). “You are. It’s what you’re doing, it’s what you’re always doing.” His gruff voice is rising in a way that it seldom does. The accent isn’t getting more pronounced in a charming way, but it’s more that tone that can be heard echoing through sickbay when someone’s not doing what needs to be done. “You could be here with me or be back there overseeing some bullshit repairs and as usual guess which do you pick?” McCoy shakes his head – god, he really needs to be drunker for this conversation.  
  
“Bones,” the other man starts, “you’re being ridiculous.”   
  
McCoy doesn’t want to hear whatever lies Jim can add to their uneasy pile. Instead it’s all just rage and anger.   
  
(He feels like he’s been here before, further back in his history, although not quite in the position he’s in right now.)   
  
“No, I’m not!” McCoy wants to yell, well, yell things he isn’t currently yelling, to let Jim know exactly what he chose to miss out on because Jim wanted to be the in the stars. And how he just doesn’t get it because while Jim thinks he understands family, he doesn’t understand having to chose between pieces of that family or that this family goes two ways and it’s no good if he ends up dead and everyone else lives. And it’s clearly not just about missing his girl, but it’s about McCoy losing everything that keeps him together.  
  
“You can’t spend a single damn day that’s not about you.” He’s boiling over and Jim is wearing his stupid 'I’m a diplomat and I’m waiting to see what cards you have before I make my play' face. ”The great James T. Kirk with his destiny and life among the stars because heaven help us all if he ever tried to be anyone else besides his dad.” McCoy is physically shaking, but at least he has the sense to set the beer bottle down before he drops it. The bile is rising in his throat and he just knows. “God, do you know what I’m…”   
  
He stops mid sentence, pressing his eyes closed and looking away. His tears are now squeezed out of closed eyes. It’s not the first time he’s cried in front of Jim, not that it happens often, but when he blinks open his eyes to see Jim just standing there he knows it’s going to be the last.   
  
He knows that Jim is seconds away from a lame excuse and bolting. He might feel like a stranger right now, but McCoy knows that fool better than he knows himself.   
  
“I swear to god I’ll never understand…” McCoy starts before Jim has the chance to. There doesn’t need to be any other words to follow. This time it’s McCoy who leaves because he won’t be left, not today, not when he’s already trying to stay afloat.


	4. Keep Rollin' On

**Year Two - March 2259**  
“You know how we practically live together anyway?” He says as he pops up from behind their rock covering. Jim fires off two well-aimed shots at the aliens who weren’t as friendly as the reports indicated. “Well, I’m thinking about just making sure some of his stuff is always in my quarters so he can’t slip away in the middle of the night like he usually does to get a change of clothes or whatever.”  
  
The fact of the matter is that Jane Austen has nothing on Jim Kirk. For all her scenes involving gentlemen and ladies keeping abreast with witty repertoire while dancing, none of her heroines or heroes could be this awesome. Because not getting shot is far more complicated than any country-dance or finishing line. (And while we’re at it, his dancing is far more epic than that too.)  
  
He drops back down under the line of cover just before the rock takes a blast sending little pebbles flying at them. Jim is sure a handful hit him, adding to the scratches and bruises that Bones will have to take care of when he gets back, but what’s one more for the road?   
  
“Spock? You gonna say something here?” Brushing the dirt and sweat from his face he looks to his first officer expectantly.  
  
They may not yet be the epic best friends that Spock Prime said they were destined to be, but they do all right. Besides they each have other relationships that define them, which is why asking Spock these sorts of questions are of the utmost importance even if he won’t ever divulge any of the details of his relationship with Uhura. Still, they seem to work and it’s the best example Jim has of a functioning relationship even if it looks nothing like his.  
  
Spock stares at him plainly for a moment, the promise of an eyebrow rise just moments away. Jim is sure that the next word out of the Vulcan’s mouth will be fascinating. Instead the crazed tentacles with heads throw something that looks not unlike a grenade into their makeshift fort.  
  
“I find this a highly inappropriate point of discussion at this juncture,” says Spock before he grabs the Captain and pulls him away from the oncoming blast.  
  
The shelter explodes into a spectacular shower of pebbles and dust that could have also included human and Vulcan bits if they were a moment slower. Any sane person’s heart would be racing at nearly dying, but between a Vulcan and someone who only feels alive standing on the edge, it’s just another day at the office. If anything, it’s the conversation he’s currently having that’s driving his heart rate up.  
  
“Yeah, but what do you think?” It’s not a whine, because he’s a starship captain in what might soon be considered some sort of war zone, but it’s hardly a pleasant sort of tone.  
  
“It would be only logical,” says Spock after another too long moment.  
  
“See! That’s what I mean.” He slaps Spock on the shoulder in a renewed exuberance. Not that anything with Bones is logical, but still. “Thanks, man.” Jim hoists himself back up. “Alright, let’s go be heroes.”  
  
And before his first officer has a chance to respond, Jim is off running toward enemy lines because this needs to be over so he can see if gold and blue really do go together in his closet the same way they do on his floor.  
  
After they neutralize the crazy tentacle aliens, the non-crazy tentacle aliens are insistent on a feast in their honor. It’s not unexpected. In fact, Kirk is forced into his dress golds more often than he would like for this very reason, but it comes with the territory. However, he’s never managed to find himself in quite this state.  
  
Captain Kirk stumbles into the corridor and is immediately grateful for the quick reflexes of his first officer, which prevent him from falling flat on his face. Content to put all of his weight on Spock if that means he can keep walking, Jim continues as if nothing has changed.  
  
“You know when they say space is the final frontier they really mean it.”  
  
“Captain, I believe that you are under the influence of a mind altering substance.” Spock makes a moderate effort to at least shift Jim so they are not touching so much, but it’s clear the captain is truly unable to stand on his own. “Perhaps you should have heeded the warning from medical to refrain or moderate all consumption of foods until the full toxicity reports came back.”  
  
To that Jim blows a raspberry, which echoes down the corridor. He was never the sort to slow down or pause. Jim Kirk barreled on through. Hell, that was why Pike recruited him. So, why would this be any different?  
  
“I’m a modern age longhunter.” He starts then pauses distracted by the strange tingling on his lips. “They’re going to rename this planet after me. Call it Kirkius or something in honor of the man who showed them the universe was a vast and beautiful place.” He throws his arms to indicate the infinite nature of space and all he does is manage to throw off his balance enough to actually tumble toward the ground. Spock allows him to fall on his face with that tight lock on his mouth that Jim knows totally means laughter or at least mild amusement.  
  
So, okay so he was a little drunk.  
  
And maybe a little meant blindingly, stumbling all over the place in a way unbefitting of a captain, but this time it really wasn’t his fault! It’s not like he asked the Kirkians to grow food that was naturally fermented in a way that was particularly potent to human biology. How was he supposed to know that due to a quirk of their alien biology, the Kirkians consumed fermented food that with high levels of ethanol? (Although if anything that made them more worthy of being called Kirkians.) And he couldn’t just say no when it was a feast in his honor.  
  
“It would be prudent to call Doctor McCoy,” says Spock after Jim refuses to get off the ground.  
  
“Bones!” He nearly screams like a kid who has just been told he’s getting a puppy for Christmas. “Yeah, get Bones, he totally needs to be here.” His excitement fuels his desire to stand and it’s quite the show. Devoid of grace or any sort of elegance that he normally holds, Jim tries to stand but his mind is already off on other things. So it’s a strange not quite dance of limbs and muscles figuring out how to support his weight once more. “Heh. Bones on my planet. Maybe I’ll give him a piece, so then all he can have is his bones and a pieces of Kirkius.”  
  
For his part, Spock ignores the captain and flips open his comm.. “Doctor McCoy,” he pauses for acknowledgement before continuing. “The captain appears to be having a negative reaction to the food as you predicted.”  
  
Distracted, all Jim can really comprehend is that somewhere he can hear Bones grumbling about stupid kids and the dangers of unknown planets. It’s still a new sort of rant, well the bit about the planets at least, but Jim’s sure it will be an old hat eventually. Although it still brings a smile to his face (and he hopes that will never change).  
  
“Bones! Bones!” He’s yelling probably just loud enough in the background to be picked up on the communicator. “My planet is beautiful, don’t insult Kirkius!”  
  
Spock simply raises an eyebrow at the same moment Bones sighs and Jim knows Bones is totally shaking his head with very serious sort of frowning face that he’s seen far too many times.  
  
“I’m on my way,” says Bones.  
  
And Jim really shouldn’t be so excited about this, but he is. “Well, I’ll just wait here ‘til Bones arrives, you should go explore Kirkius.” It’s a poor attempt at his Captain Voice.  
  
While he shouldn’t be left alone, it’s clear that Spock would rather avoid continued exposure to a drunken Kirk. And really Bones is just a few seconds away.  
  
Bones, his mind calls out, thinking how wonderful and horrible it would be to have that Vulcan bond mate thing because then he would just know, they both would. There wouldn’t be any hesitance about where this wild adventure is going. Because for all they already know about each other, Jim is starting to realize there are still corners of his past that Bones doesn’t really know about yet, just as he’s sure Bones as some of his own. It’s part of why they work because they are both damaged in such similar ways that they know better than to ask because for some things there just aren’t any words. Maybe they are both cowards for not trying to find them, but together they feel whole and happy and that should be enough. Right now, it feels like enough.  
  
  
 **Year Nine - April 2267**  
It’s not uncommon. Jim often walks in on McCoy speaking live with his little girl, who really isn’t so little now, and McCoy promptly ignores him because this time is precious. It is in those moments that he starts to fully understand all the ways in which they are broken. Sure, they can paint a pretty façade, but strip away the layers and the structure’s barely holding together.  
  
“Dad, you look tired.” At seventeen, Joanna really is gorgeous, the absolute best of both of her parents physically and while not quite the same amount of genius McCoy is, she holds her own well enough.  
  
“It’s just been a long couple of months,” says McCoy. He’s sure that Jim can hear everything he’s not saying in that one sentence.  
  
Joanna’s reaction is nothing but a passing concern in a schooled expression because she loves her dad, but she sometimes doesn’t like him very much. It’s common for most teenage girls, but their relationship takes it to a whole other level. “You need to take better care of yourself.”  
  
“Hard to do when I have to take care of Jim.”  
  
There’s a long silence. McCoy can hear Jim’s steady breathing and wonders if he knows. Wonders if Jim understands the ways that Joanna hates him and Jim too. It’s the elephant in the room that everyone is afraid to address and no one is sure whether to be grateful or annoyed over it. (But Jim does know, because it’s the same way he hated his mother growing up.)  
  
And yet he feels relieved when she changes the subject. “You’re still coming right?”  
  
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Jim peaks around the corner just far enough to see Joanna’s momentary hesitation, hearing the words she doesn’t say.  
  
“Just,” she pauses, “it’s important, okay? I would really like for you to be there.”  
  
McCoy sighs. It’s not breathy or sexy, but exhausting. “JoJo, I said I was going to be there and I’ll keep my word. It’s not every day my baby girl gets honored by Starfleet for a great discovery during ‘the world’s worst summer internship’” He looks right up at the screen, trying to push away his own feelings over the matter. “I’ll be there.”  
  
He wants to be the proud father, but really he wants to have a sense of purpose again. To not be jealous of his own daughter because suddenly she’s doing exciting things while all he has to look forward to are the upcoming crew physicals. McCoy knows he’s been aboard this ship floating through space for years now, but this is the first time he truly feels lost at sea.  
  
  
 **Year Two - March 2259**  
Once Bones does arrive it’s another dance to get the drunken and now quite handsy captain back to his quarters. Jim has been all sorts of drunk before, but never quite this verbose where words come like vomit without intent or direction. “You know, I never thought I’d be twenty-six, captaining a starship and having planets being named after me.”  
  
At this point Bones may as well be carrying him, because they are fused at every point they could be and still move forward, and yet Jim is unable to ever get enough. “It’s good to be king,” he says in a sigh, resting his head on Bones’s shoulder.  
  
“If that makes me your queen or some damn damsel in distress you got another thing coming for you.”  
  
“Naaah, you’re like the 1st Duke of Buckingham.”  
  
Rather than try to answer, Bones pushes Jim off so he can enter the code to Jim’s quarters, which at this point might as well be called theirs, but technically they still have their own rooms. It’s then another feat all together, which includes no less than three orgasms, to coax Jim into the bed.  
  
“You don’t do anything just half-assed do you?” His tone falls into that strange annoyed but loving place that Jim still doesn’t quite understand other than that he likes it. So he just grins up at Bones.  
  
“Full speed ahead, Bones, always full speed ahead.” Jim falls back against Bones’s pillow, because it’s nicer than his and pats the empty space next to him. “Now get in this rack or I’m totally taking back Bonesopolis.”  
  
Bones shakes his head and even drunk Jim stops to marvel at the happy crinkle around his eyes. Jim doesn’t see this look often enough.  
  
“You’re insufferable,” Bones concludes after a moment before inevitably getting into the bed. “I should just get you a leash for these diplomatic missions because if they don’t end in shooting, they end in either alien marriages or you drunk off your ass. And this time you managed all of the above.”  
  
“Not married, and you love my ass.” Jim latches onto to Bones like barnacle, settling happily into the welcoming body heat. It’s an action that never fails to elicit a relieved sigh from the doctor. Jim thinks that must be the sound of the world falling back into place. He turns his head, gaze peering out over his eyelashes. “And you love it more when I’m so drunk you can push me to the edge and just keep me there, moaning and begging for release.”  
  
That earns Jim a gentle kiss to his forehead and a strong arm pulled tighter across his shoulders. “Shut up and go to sleep, kid.”  
  
“Love you too, Bones.”   
  
Jim is halfway into unconsciousness in near perfect contentedness when an errant thought flashes across his mind that all of this is happening so fast. Of course, it’s soon quelled by the response of why wait when he can be happy now?


	5. And Then He Smiles

**Year Eight - November 2266**  
Leonard McCoy is sure that Jim Kirk has an arsenal of smiles at his disposal. Even after all the years together, he knows he hasn’t seen all of them, but he does know there’s a specific one meant just for him. And without fail that singular smile makes all the bullshit he’s drowning in just fade away because for one fleeting moment nothing else matters but that intent gaze is focused entirely on him. There have been times over the years when it didn’t come close to fixing everything, but it was a constant and always filled with the promise that they would be better than what had come before.  
  
It’s more than a smile, but a promise between the two of them made well before they even left Earth. Captain Kirk might belong to the world, but with that smile Jim can belong to him.   
  
Still, there is something about those smiles in all of their infinite diversity. McCoy knows it is a part of that famous Kirk charm, just like the ability to appear at home in whatever situation he’s thrown into. It’s something McCoy has always envied in a way that sometimes looks a look like annoyance because the kid has always exuded confidence the same way normal people exhale carbon dioxide and oxygen. Jim doesn’t have a problem being on stage for the world to see.   
  
McCoy, on the other hand, has not quite been humble about his genius, but rather uninterested in the spectacle of it. He didn’t pull medical miracles out of thin air for the recognition or the fame. He did it to save people. He did because it was the only thing he was really any good at. He only puts up with the galas, dinners, and banquets because it’s expected of him.   
  
Even the promise of an open bar isn’t truly enough to make this an enjoyable experience. (After all there’s alcohol in their quarters and it doesn’t come with the cost of having to be civil to people blowing smoke up his ass.) Despite all of the times he’s been paraded around since med school it has never gotten easier. In fact it might have become more difficult. McCoy will simply never feel like he has any place in these formal affairs that are really more of a damn pissing match than anything else. In attempt to make them more bearable, he tends to stay off to the side, nursing whatever alcoholic drink is on hand for the evening, and trying to find the safest person in the room to engage in some level of intellectual conversation with.   
  
So, yes he’s still bitter about these affairs, but at least he doesn’t have to be touted around as the captain’s spouse, and he can just be his own grumpy self. That doesn’t mean he likes it. Especially not the fact that Jim is not only comfortable in these monkey suits they call dress uniforms, but he looks down right attractive. Not that he would look bad in anything, or nothing for that matter, but that’s hardly the point.   
  
McCoy’s dislike of the dress uniforms has nothing to do with the how the fabric around his neck always irritates the skin there or even the way it doesn’t quite fit right. It’s more how they put a person’s rank on display.   
  
If he’s going to associate initials with his name the “LCDR” that the computer always assigns to his name falls at the very bottom of a surprisingly long list. To anyone who knows him longer than five minutes knows the MD, MPH, PhD, FACS, FCAP or even the highly regarded fellowships are better at describing Leonard H. McCoy than what Starfleet awarded him. There also are the published studies as well and the fact that his work is referenced all over the place, but he’s really not looking to brag. It’s just that he would feel better if those titles were on display rather than his military rank or that stupid medal he was awarded for just doing his damn job. The other damn citation from Dramia II where his world fell out from under him has never left the box because he knows well that he didn’t deserve that one and the captain, or rather Jim, knows better than to comment on the fact he doesn’t wear it. (Because the truth is Jim can’t stand to look at it either. It represents a time that neither of them wants to talk about because it’s taken them both a long time to get over it. Or at least act like they have put it behind them.)   
  
For the past hour McCoy has been off to the side looking as unapproachable as possible just watching Jim in his element. And it truly is quite a sight. From the outside, Jim doesn’t hold any unease with his rank and achievements on display (and after seven years running Enterprise he has a few), and in these moments he truly is the poster boy of the Federation.   
  
Of course, McCoy knows that the man here isn’t really his Jim, but some version of Captain Kirk. And despite being a respected captain or perhaps because it, but really because it is simply who is, Jim is flirting with the rather voluptuous ginger he’s engaged in a conversation with. He’s not jealous as much as part of him needs that sort of attention right now. These silly Federation galas always take a great deal out of him and often throughout the night he needs a shot of Jim to keep him going. (And of course Jim knows that too.)  
  
“Bones!” The shout across the room is unmistakable. It makes his heart leap and a scowl sink into his face at the same time. When he looks up Jim is approaching with the ginger beauty in tow, which just sets the scowl a bit further into his features.   
  
Or at least it does until Jim’s smile shifts. It’s hardly enough for most people to notice, but McCoy does. (He always does.)  
  
“I was just talking to Ambassador Rhea about a brain grafting technique her people are developing.” Jim’s tone falls into the gray area where he is both the diplomat and the loveable idiot who willingly puts up with McCoy. “And you wouldn’t believe it, but in talking she brought up the McCoy-Patten Method, and she didn’t believe me that I know the Doctor McCoy.” Jim roles his eyes, clearly less of a captain at the moment and McCoy can’t help but almost smile back at him. Even if he knows that Jim is damn well placating him, he appreciates it.   
  
Bones internally exhales as Jim introduces him to the Ambassador and they easily slip into a conversation about the medical procedure he developed back in his residency. Every now and then he looks over to Jim. He feels like he can belong in this world of brass and politics, but only if Jim is guiding the way.   
  
After a few minutes of Jim just watching the two interact he speaks up. “If you two will excuse me, I think I see the trade minister.” The Ambassador nods and before McCoy has a chance to say anything Jim leans into McCoy, dropping his voice, but not quite enough for the Ambassador not to overhear. “And you owe me a dance later.”  
  
“Jim.” It’s curt and after all these years, he really doesn’t have to say anything else.   
  
“None of that, I know you like it.” Jim bumps his side against him. McCoy really doesn’t want to be forced to the center of attention with the captain, even if it’s inevitable. Really, he just wants to drag Jim into a bedroom somewhere and forget about this nonsense, but the problem is that Jim sort of likes attention and McCoy likes seeing Jim happy, so he’ll mostly put up a fuss for show and just go along with anyway.   
  
“It’s tradition for all high ranking officials to do this elaborate dance. Besides,” Jim says dragging out the word, “I’ve already told the president’s daughter that I not only had a partner for the dance, but also a mate who was prone to bouts of grumpiness if he goes ignored for too long.”  
  
“Damn it, Jim,” he says forgetting where he is or who he’s with. “I’m a doctor, not some puppy who needs constant attention!”   
  
Jim just smiles again and McCoy knows he’s a goner (and maybe part of him dislikes that more). “Sure, Bones.” Jim reaches out to touch McCoy once more. The doctor’s not sure what he’s supposed to be feeling then, so he simply feels. He allows it to distract him as he watches Jim transform back into captain and slip away to find the trade minister.   
  
“Your captain is quite something,” says the Ambassador, refocusing his attention. McCoy doesn’t reply to her comment, he just smiles, silent a moment before going back to the intricacies of neuron receptor sites.   
  
  
 **Year Eight – March 2266**  
The simple truth is that they work. Despite what people might see or assume about the two of them, McCoy and Jim have always been able to effortlessly compliment each other. While they can balance each other out, that doesn’t mean they don’t disagree. (And really after the Dramia mission, the senior staff is almost grateful to feel the vibrations of an honest Jim and McCoy fight.)  
  
Except they don’t so much fight as they explode at each other for short periods of time before retreating to their own corners to clean and heal their wounds. They don’t spend hours talking about their feelings or how they can be better. It’s resolved with the offer of peach cobbler in the mess, or a back rub after a long day and if all else fails a strong drink. Then again it is more that the Captain and the Chief Medical Officer fight, because the fighting usually comes down to these roles that they both so desperately cling to and it’s hard sometimes to see the lines between the person and the rank.   
  
Especially when it’s the job of the CMO to keep the Captain together and this Captain is known to throw himself in the line of danger to protect any of his crew. And McCoy gets it, he really does or at least he tries to, but – “Sometimes I wonder why you even bother with a security detail if you don’t let them do their job” or any other number of grumblings that more recently have launched into a fight. (Because he just might be getting too old for this shit.)   
  
“You know how you’ve had bad ideas in the past?” McCoy starts as soon as the rest of the senior staff has left the ready room. “Well this is damn right insane,” he pauses before adding, “Captain.” There’s almost a twinge of pride when he sees Jim flinch at the use of his title when they’re alone and it’s not at all playful or leading into anything fun. However, Jim doesn’t say anything just looks right up at McCoy waiting.  
  
“We lost two people down on the hellhole, I got another seven in sickbay, three who are still in critical condition.” McCoy is a bit wild right now; gesturing his hands all over the place. In contrast, Jim is still, it’s about the only time McCoy sees him that still. “And you’re going back there willingly on the off chance that Jenks and Riley might still be alive?”  
  
“I can’t and won’t advise it.” It doesn’t matter that McCoy has made these protests in calmer, more logical, words in front of the other officers. He needs to say them now, needs for Jim to hear them again on the off chance he might listen this time around. “Jim, I only released you from sickbay this morning. In case you forgot your immune system was destroying your body, which isn’t exactly what it’s supposed to do.” McCoy can’t help but wonder if Jim can hear the exhaustion, the pleading, because he can’t do this again. “Can’t you send someone else?”   
  
Jim pushes back on his chair and stands up, walking around the table to get closer to McCoy. A slow smile is pulling at his face and McCoy is doing his best to ignore it because he wants to be mad right now.   
  
“It’s okay, Bones.” He pulls their bodies closer because Jim Kirk is nothing but a damn brilliant tactician and he knows how McCoy is vulnerable to Jim. He takes McCoy’s left hand into his to allow his fingers to trace the class ring there – Jim’s class ring. “It will work.” McCoy looks up and is completely unable to avoid that damn smile and those earnest blue eyes and he really wants to punch him just then. But he doesn’t. “And you can yell at me all you want when I get back.”  
  
When the team is beamed back into the transporter room exactly three hours later, Jim Kirk is there with the biggest smile on his face and still able to stand upright, although McCoy knows that he’s physically compromised. His eyes dart over to McCoy, proud of himself but not quite smug enough to say ‘I told you so,’ so it is more of a ‘see I kept my word.’   
  
McCoy doesn’t really have to return the look. He now has two critical patients who need his time more than Jim. _The kid’s insane_ , he thinks, tricorder at the ready,  _but he does the impossible_.   
  
(Not that it stops McCoy from socking him nice and hard immediately after he’s released him from sickbay for the second time in the span of twenty-four hours.)  
  
  
 **Year Seven - April 2265**  
It’s been a year to the date. His body seems to remember it more than his mind because he doesn’t really want to remember. McCoy wishes that this day and really the weeks that surround it could all just be surgically removed form his life. He’s sure there’s some brilliant fucking irony in the fact that he’d probably be the only person able to medically block or even delete unwanted memories from the brain if anyone could because that’s just how this sort of thing works.   
  
He knows he should have gotten out of bed about ten minutes ago and joined Jim in the shower before they started their day. Because maybe not having to be alone would have been better for him, but now that he is alone, it’s all he can think about. It haunts him like every bad decision he’s every made and all the people he couldn’t save. And it all bleeds into every waking action (and a few sleeping one as well).  
  
He knows that there are always going to be away missions and injuries. And with Enterprise and her crew it’s guaranteed that someone is coming back in critical condition. Most of the time it’s Jim and McCoy knows how to deal with it. Not that he particularly likes it, but it’s a familiar routine. Then he can mend the bones or split skin and process all of those emotions without wanting to drink himself blind.   
  
What he can’t deal with is when an otherwise routine mission turns into a disaster because of something he did, or might do. Dramia II is now a mission that they don’t talk about, especially the part where it earned him a damn citation in the process (and if that isn’t irony, McCoy isn’t sure what is). Just like how they don’t really talk about Tarsus.   
  
In a way, it’s a burden they share, despite how much he wishes they didn’t. Not that his wishes are worth a damn.   
  
McCoy grumbles and pulls the covers over his head. He may be a legendary thirty-eight year old chief medical officer, but today he really just wants to hide in bed and be miserable. And maybe if he’s really lucky he’ll be able to convince Jim to do the same so he can cling to him and push out the space between where these unnamed monsters fester.  
  
“Bones.” Jim’s voice is soft and McCoy wonders how he missed hearing the shower turn off. At least he doesn’t miss the dip of the mattress to accommodate Jim’s damp form reaching across the bed. “You’re here and you’re safe,” it’s a whisper as he lies across the doctor’s body. For a moment they relish in the proximity and silence still separated by a thin layer of linen.   
  
Eventually Jim reaches up and peels the covers back, bright eyes peering right into those cloudy hazel ones. “Unfortunately, we really can’t stay in bed all day today.” He leans forward to press a gentle kiss to the furrows in McCoy’s forehead.   
  
As he pulls away to look at him once more, Jim smiles and he wants to believe it. Wants that effortless smile to fix everything not quite right in his life. It seemed to work magic in the past. Now it just falls flat. And that might just break his heart, if weren't already so broken. But it will heal, his heart has been broken before and he’s always had Jim to make sure it’s mended again. (He just needs a little more time.)


	6. You'll Get to be Happy

**Year Three - December 2260**  
There are always going to be good days and bad days. Jim has come to terms with this fact years ago. His only hope is that the good days would outweigh the bad ones and not just for himself. He makes these wishes for his ship, his crew, and more specifically his Bones. And for the most part he has made sure that his wishes take flight in reality.  
  
But he’s not blind. He knows that space isn’t the same for him as it is for Bones. Jim has always wanted to reach out beyond the limits of the atmosphere and Earth’s gravity. He was born in space and he feels like he spent much of his adolescence unknowingly trying to get back out there. It didn’t exactly feel like home, but the unknown out here feels familiar and comforting in ways that he thinks home should feel like. What does make it home is a that grumpy doctor who has roots so deep in Earth, Jim jokingly thinks it’s that which prevents their ship from hitting warp factor eight. But it’s fine because he needs an anchor. He likes having an anchor.   
  
And for all that Bones looks after him, he does a fair share of looking after Bones too. It’s never quite as obvious as putting organs back where they belong, but it’s making him laugh on a long day, or finding something to make a tedious meeting with the brass more approachable, and really it’s just finding ways to make Enterprise a sort of home for the two of them.   
  
Even before Bones collapses on their bed (as opposed to how it always used to be his rack) well after dinner’s been served, Jim knows that today is not a good day. Losing patients is never an easy, but losing two women and a child who he worked non-stop for three days to keep alive is crashing into a giant brick wall.   
  
Jim lets him lay there for a moment, likely taking in the combined scent of them that even after they’ve changed sheets the bed seems to hold because this is very much their territory, even if it’s technically the captain’s quarters. Once Jim believes that Bones has settled as much as he is going to he makes his move.   
  
It starts simply. Jim has always found comfort in the simplest movements and knows that Bones does too. He leans forward to press a small kiss to the exposed span of skin on the doctor’s neck. There is nothing awkward or hesitant about these motions. Even a few years ago that might have sent him running, but now Jim enjoys the familiarity, likes knowing all the secrets that Bones’s body holds – and he really hopes he knows ones that The Ex didn’t have the patience to discover.   
  
“I got us extra rations of water if you want to make use of that tub you like to bitch about being impractical on a spaceship.” And his mind can’t help but think of some of the excellent memories made in that tub as long as he remembered to lock the door because Spock walking in on them was not a turn on. Jim moves to put half of his body on Bones, using his weight to anchor the other man to this moment and out of that head of his. It’s a problem they both have, but that’s the burden of genius – the noise never stops. “But I know you totally love it.”  
  
“Jim,” he turns his head so his words aren’t muffled into the sheets, “I just want to lay here and not exist for a while.”  
  
“Not gonna happen, Bones.” Jim nudges him and cranes his neck to get a glance at the chrono on the wall. “I have exactly two hours to make you look presentable for a very special lady who is looking forward to talking with you.”  
  
Bringing up Joanna is usually a sure way to make him smile, but tonight it just draws a groan from deep in his chest. As Jim feels that noise vibrate through his own body. It scares him a little because Jim is sure that there isn’t anything more in the universe that Bones loves more than his daughter. And Jim is fine with that because he knows he comes in a very close albeit often times reluctant second, which is where he wants to be because fathers should be a part of their children’s lives.   
  
“Come on, McGrumpy, I’ll have you fixed up in no time.”   
  
Bones doesn’t go easily, but Jim isn’t expecting him to. In some way it’s part of this unspoken game they play. The doctor rarely does anything with open enthusiasm, but Jim understands that his lack of fight or spoken opposition is a silent agreement rather than complete passiveness.   
  
They undress each other in no real hurry, but Jim has always found clothes to be an optional sort of thing so he doesn’t make a big ordeal of it. He even pushes Bones into the sonic for a quick rinse before pulling him into the tub that is barely big enough for two, even if they sit wrapped in each other.   
  
Jim lets the tension in his body go as he feels Bones relax into him. He wants to reach out and take away all the hurt and pain because surely a man whose motivation in life is to heal others shouldn’t have to suffer.   
  
“I think you were wrong,” he says resting his chin on Bones’s shoulder.  
  
“Hmm?”   
  
“I don’t think a little suffering is good for the soul.” Jim presses a kiss into Bones’s shoulder. His hands never content to simply be still when they have such free access.   
  
“Jim.” His voice has that warning tone, but his body is still loose against Jim. His breathing and maybe even his heartbeat seem to fall in sync with Jim’s – a fact that always makes Jim smile. “A soak and a hand…”  
  
“Shhh,” says Jim. He reaches his neck around to kiss the side of Bones’s mouth, “You just worry about feeling and listening to me as I tell you a story, a little bedtime story…well, bath time strictly speaking.”  
  
The doctor’s muscles shift readying to move, but Jim’s hands are skilled enough to calm any such thoughts of motion or protest. “I call it ‘The Doctor of Enterprosa.’” His hands seem to work on their own accord, massaging out all the knots in Bones’s shoulders. “Skellington would work ‘til half passed nine in his hospital, get up at dawn and start all over again.”   
  
“You know for a story, you’re not being overly creative with the names here.”   
  
Jim chooses to ignore the grumble for what it is: Leonard McCoy trying to and failing to impede Jim’s Awesome Storytelling Skills.  
  
“For 10 years he labored, day after day, but there was always something missing. He had a beautiful daughter…” He can feel Bones tense and presses light kisses to those offending muscle groups, only just impacting his ability to keep talking. “Who lived far away with a nightmare of a woman Skellington thought he loved once, until she took everything.  
  
“At least, Skellington had his practice, and regular visits from a reckless man named Seamus. At first Seamus was a nuisance, but he slowly became a fixture and maybe even a friend to Skellington, drinking with him and always encouraging him to keep fighting.”  
  
Jim is sure their fingers are pruning now and the water is not quite as warm as it was when they started, but he’s content to be here.   
  
“Then there was a bad outbreak in the land of Enterprosa that was killing off the people and Skellington was determined to save them all, but it was getting worse and everyday someone died he felt himself falling more to pieces.” His words are soft, his arms now wrapped around Bones. This is the place in the story where he knows he needs to ground the other man and not let him float back into the recent tragedy. “Then one day, Skellington decided he was done, he was ready to say ‘Good night old Enterprosa!’”   
  
And really he has to ground himself too, because this might be an invitation for Bones to relive some his failures and decide enough it enough. He’s also painting all of Jim’s fears (because everyone always leaves).   
  
“So Seamus cried out ‘Wait! Not Yet!’ He told Skellington he was the finest damn doctor in Enterprosa and that he needed to do just one more trial to see what might get. But Skellington was all ‘it’s late, I’m tired and I accept my fate.’ To which Seamus said, ‘just one more trial and you’ll unlock the dreams you lost.’”   
  
“Really Jim?” Jim can’t see it, but he’s sure there’s a fantastic eyebrow raise to accompany his words. “Dreams and happiness in biochemical testing?”   
  
The captain just smiles and pulls his doctor a bit closer. “My story, Bones, when you tell stories I don’t correct you.” He doesn’t allow Bones to counter with the fact that the only stories he tells are to Joanna and she’s been too old for stories for some time now.   
  
“Where was I? Oh yes, so with reluctance, Skellington went back to his lab cursing out the awesome and quite attractive Seamus who promised to stay the night, cheer him on and help.”  
  
They both know that Jim’s version of helping out in Sickbay usually means dragging Bones, never the CMO then, into his office for some fraternization. Bones would grumble, but Jim knew that was for appearance sake more than anything else.   
  
“They spent the whole night working and with the sunrise came a breakthrough and batch 17 not only saves the day, but carries 40 seasons of dreams, that were about to come real because Seamus stepped out to get breakfast and along with a nice bagel spread he returns with the doctor’s daughter and said ‘I would ask if I could stay for breakfast, but I’m already planning to stay forever.’”   
  
As pick up lines go, few things can beat ‘I may throw up on you’, but he knows that at that point they are beyond pick up lines. No, they are heading closer and closer to promises and permanence, scary as those things might be. (Scarier that Jim thinks he might just want those things.)   
  
Jim turns in the tub, leading Bones’s body to give way so they can sit facing each other. It’s not quite comfortable, but they can make it – they have always been able to make it work.   
  
“I know you worry that you’re missing out on Joanna’s life, or that you’re a horrible person and father.” Jim takes Bones’s hands in his own. For all the intimate touches shared between them, there is always something particularly spectacular about just holding hands. “But you’re a good dad, you have always been a good father, and damn if I won’t do anything in my power to help that along.”   
  
Bones looks at him. He’s so open at the moment. All of the hard layers and gruffness have simply washed away to get to that soft gooey, but too easily broken center. So, Jim treads with great care. He might be harsh and reckless in all other areas, but in moments like this he doesn’t push the boundaries.   
  
A slow smile rolls across Jim’s face as he thinks of how Bones is going to react. Most times these images would be some sort of depraved sexual act, which are all good and fun, but tonight it’s something else. Tonight he just wants the other man to smile and not go to bed with a heavy heart.   
  
“Which is why Enterprise has been ordered to detour to Cerberus system to upgrade the communications system next month and increase their subspace transmission range.”  
  
“Jim, you didn’t.” The words are more of a gasp than a statement. There isn’t a smile yet, but if Jim is right it’s not long off.   
  
He nudges the doctor’s knee, trying to remove some of the space and tepid water between them. “I was going to wait until your birthday,” he says in a teasing tone, “so happy birthday, and you better act surprised when I secretly beam Jo aboard next month or else I’ll never hear the end of it.”   
  
And there it is, that brilliant smile lighting up a face ripe with scowl lines because the world is seldom kind to Bones. Jim gets that because the world isn’t exactly kind to him either, but he’s always been determined to make his own way in the world and fuck the rest. The smile is honest but not without burden. While they might be able to wash away the dirt and blood, Bones has always been the sort to carry every surgery and every moment he wasn’t good enough around with him as a living monument of how he needs to be better. And yet he scolds Jim for blaming himself when a crewmember doesn’t come back from a mission or something goes wrong on his ship. Jim supposes he could be annoyed, but really he thinks that what makes them fit together so well. They both understand the weight of responsibility that comes with authority.   
  
Before the world can come rushing back, Jim leans forward to pull Bones into a searing kiss. It’s drawn out and full of all the things neither of them will say. But they could write novels with the movements of their lips along with yearning hands and other useful limbs.   
  
“Alright, Bones,” he says pulling away without losing the distance, “Let’s go say hi to that beautiful girl of yours.”  
  
It’s then a dance of damp bodies to find something that can serve as both sleepwear and not be forever scarring to a fourteen year old who Jim already owes therapy to for the number of situations she has caught her dad in. Part of Jim doesn’t understand what the big deal was, he would have liked to catch his parents…well not so much making out, but at least showing they loved each other.   
  
Finally, after a dozen or so chaste kisses, Jim pulls Bones down to sit next to him on the bed. Bones is wearing a pair of threadbare sweats and a nondescript t-shirt while Jim’s sporting an Ole Miss t-shirt and running shorts, because he is of the impression that Bones has more comfortable clothes to sleep in. For good measure, Jim slings his arm around Bones’s shoulder in a casual move of possession, but it helps his hands from straying, as he pulls up the waiting call.  
  
Jim’s “Hello there, peanut” clearly outshines Bones’s greeting, but Joanna doesn’t seem to care as she shouts “Dad!” and then “Jim” like she hasn’t spoken to them in weeks. And technically it’s been almost six weeks since they have been in range for a live update, but there was always letters and other transmissions from the both of them.  
  
They talk for a while. Well, mostly Joanna talks and every now and then Bones asks questions, pulling through as best he can. But even Joanna can see he’s tired. And Jim knowing this dance well enough, willingly takes a backseat to allow father and daughter a chance to connect.  
  
“Dad, are you okay?” There is such earnest concern in her hazel eyes that Jim knows she’s going to grow up to be just like her daddy, with a heart too big and easily broken by the wrong sort of people. She’s not his kid by genetics or even legally at this point, but she feels like she’s his and he wants to protect and care for her the way he does with the rest of the huge family he’s collected along the way. Even if it’s clear she may not love him the way he loves her, but it’s a minor detail because he’s trying and they have found some sort truce between them that might be love.   
  
“Your dad’s just had a long day, he’s been working nonstop for the past 72 hours.” Jim explains, “I was actually about to tuck him into bed, but he didn’t want to miss you.” It gives Bones an easy out, which Jim knows he needs. “Jo, can you hang around for a few moment while I put Bones to bed?”  
  
“Okay, but you seriously have only five minutes because I know what sort of things you to get up to.” God that eye roll must be genetic and Jim absolutely loves it.   
  
“Captain’s honor.” Jim turns off the live feed and transfers the transmission to his desk on the other side of the partition. Now all he has to worry about moving Bones under the covers. At least he goes willingly, too tired to put up a fight.   
  
Once under the covers, Bones rolls into a fetal position, hugging Jim’s pillow to help fill the empty space for now. “Sometimes I think you expect too much of me,” he murmurs half-asleep. And all Jim can do it smile.   
  
“I just want the world to see how brilliant you are,” he whispers. Jim leans forward kisses Bones’s forehead. It’s a gesture that is more common in the other direction, but Jim always found comfort in it. He just hopes the same is true for Bones. He sits perched on the bed watching Bones for a few minutes while his breathing evens out, giving into the pull of sleep. Or at least as close an approximation of sleep he can get without a bedmate.   
  
And when they have become so codependent, he’s not sure, but it doesn’t entirely bother him.   
  
“I’m a lucky man,” he admits only once he was sure Bones was asleep and won’t hear him. Jim squeezes Bones’s arm before carefully pushing him off the bed. Bones shifts on the bed trying to make up for the loss of Jim right next to him. He wants to just crawl into the bed with him, but he made a promise he intends to keep.   
  
He moves to his desk and sits down. Jim turns the connection back on. “See man of my word.” Even although she didn’t say it, he knows there is something she needs from him. “What on your mind, Jo?”  
  
“Are you taking care of my dad?”   
  
Such a simple question in the big scheme of things and yet it gives him pause. Forcing him to evaluate his actions before he answers – a rarity if anything if only because it’s so evident in this moment. “I’m doing my best, Jo. He’s not an easy man to take care of.”   
  
It isn’t an easy job, but then again Jim knows that being with him isn’t easy either. Maybe that’s what a relationship really is about – two people willing to keep fighting for what they have because they are good for each other. And if he hasn’t gone running yet, he doesn’t think he’s going to anytime soon.   
  
“Which is why you have to.” He expects there to be some annoyed or whiny teenage tone in her voice, but it’s just all business. She is going to give the medical world a run for their money some day. “You have to keep making him happy.” Joanna looks down, presumably at her hands. “Dad’s not good when he gets too sad.”   
  
“I know,” he says. And he does. “I don’t like him to be sad either, but life isn’t always so easy out here. Today was just a bad day for your dad,” for all of us really, he wants to add, even though he really means for me too, because everything that happens on this ship is his responsibility. “I’ll do my best to make sure that tomorrow is better.”  
  
Joanna looks up, staring at him for a long, long time. Jim’s been stared down by any number of intimidating people, Klingons and Romulans included, but there is always something particularly unnerving when it’s this slight blonde girl with Bones’s eyes sizing him up.   
  
“Do you promise?” She asks knowing well the weight that word has between the three of them.   
  
“I promise to do my best to make sure he’s happy because he makes me happy too.”   
  
“Alright.” She nods her head. They could drag this out, but perhaps she sees that Jim is tired too. “I should go, I have some readings I need to finish, but I’m still expecting to see you next month?”  
  
“The stars willing,” he says with a smile because it’s the sort of thing he’s expected to say when she asks questions she already knows the answers too.   
  
“And they better be.” She replies, smile big, content to just play along. “Good night, Jim. And you better keep your word.”  
  
“You got it, Jo. Good night.” He cuts the connection and sits there for a moment, mentally debriefing himself. Once his mind feels settled enough he turns off the lights and stumbles back into their bedroom.   
  
Jim falls against the mattress and both men move toward each other without conscious thought. Next to him Bones relaxes further, probably just hitting his first REM cycle now that he doesn’t have to subconsciously worry where Jim is. He presses a kiss to Bones’s temple and closes his eyes. Sleep comes easily, but in his last waking moments he relishes how this right here, wrapped in Bones, feels more like home than anything else.   
  
Yes, he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure they are both happy.


	7. Mrs James Kirk

**Year Six - Summer 2264**  
  
From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
Sent: 19.6.2264 21:11FST  
To: Kirk, James CAPT  
Subject: remember chapel tells me everything  
  
Rho III reminds me a lot of Georgia in the spring. Good weather, plenty of open savannahs where the strangest of animals roam about. Well, it would remind me of Georgia if Georgia were some backwater hellhole where people didn’t even have basic hygiene. Hell, even the morons from Atlanta have the decency to wash their hands if not much else.   
  
People are dying from things that we have been treating for centuries. How the hell people can willingly go rogue and forget everything that we should know while remembering the bullshit parts like jealousy and materialism really makes me wonder and worry about humanity, Jim.   
  
At least there’s comfort in the fact that even idiots can be taught. Not that they all like to listen. Good thing I have practice dealing with those sorts of folk. But at least you have the capability to make good while telling the world to fuck off.   
  
Hell, I actually think I might start to actually miss treating your ass away mission after away mission. At least you know to wash your damn hands. But instead I’m making sure a little colony of humans doesn’t die of stupidity. Speaking of which, if you give Chapel any trouble while I’m gone, you’re getting your full spectrum boosters the second I beam back.   
  
Still, I guess it’s good to be here. These people need it and the sunrises are pretty. Not quite as pretty as they are back in Chattahoochee Hills, but they’ll do even if the sun is the wrong color. It really doesn’t feel all too bad to wake up with the sun coming through a window and really anything beats starlight.   
  
Although back on Enterprise I don’t have to deal with an issue of a bed that’s just a bit too big. Let me know you’re still alive soon so I don’t have to get Pike on the horn.   
  
  
From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
Sent: 26.6.2264 06:49FST  
To: Kirk, James CAPT  
Subject: other things to do  
  
Been up all night and still too damn wired to sleep properly. I got into a bit of a disagreement with the local mayor here after a lecture on the importance of contraceptives.  ~~God it felt like Dram~~    
  
You know better than anyone the value of contraceptives in preventing all sorts of uncomfortable STIs and good god did one of these people have you beat, clear out of the water, in strangest case I’ve encountered. At least the fool mayor decided I was right in the end.   
  
Now, I get to spend the next couple of days teaching the lab techs in training how to run the full range of STI testing. Just what I always wanted – knowing exactly who has slept with who because it’s not that big of a settlement. Not to mention if I see another purple spotted or otherwise infected penis I think I might have to swear them off for a few months, which would be mighty inconvenient for the both of us, I reckon.   
  
So rather than allow that image to simmer in my mind, here’s a list I thought I would share with you, knowing your fondness for them.  
  
Things that would be more fun right now  
Watching the fog rise over the Bay  
Reorganizing sickbay supplies  
Hand to hand combat drills at the gym  
Jamming hypos into idiotic patients (and get your mind out of the gutter)  
Talking to Jocelyn about well…just damn near anything  
Debriefing with Head of Medical   
Signing off on requisitions   
Treating engineering burns that are from that foul home brew machine that we both claim to know nothing about officially  
Hurling after a night of heavy drinking  
Sleeping (even alone if I have to)  
Eating the nasty scrambled eggs from the mess on West Campus  
Patching up idiotic friends after a night on the bend  
  
Oh and my favorite: convincing a bedfellow that we really need to get dressed and grab food before shift starts in ten minutes knowing full well we’ll probably be late at this point anyway. Not that I really mind – although I’ll deny this later.   
  
Hope things are going well on your quasar charting mission while you’re down a CMO. God knows what sort of lists you’ve been working on in my absence.   
  
  
From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
Sent: 3.7.2264 12:03FST  
To: Kirk, James CAPT  
Subject: back in the system finally  
  
Just to let you know this is the only reference you’ll get to the damned list you sent me: half of those places are never going to happen. I am far too old and modest for that shit. You want to complete them all? You better adjust those parameters or find someone else to do it…I’ll even willingly listen to your tales later if I don’t have to read Spock’s official report of it first or ever for that matter.   
  
In less perverted starship captain news…Johnson and his team got the towers up and running today. The first image the whole colony was greeted to after years of nothing was your beat up gob talking about your latest near death experience – although I reckon you might call it a milk run. (What was it I said about causing Chapel trouble again?)  
  
Well, Molly, my newest protégée, got real quiet and knocked over a tray of hypos we were cataloging. The woman’s far too jumpy, Jim. I don’t know how you dealt with Rand following you around all the time or how you deal with her now that she runs the transporter room. Molly is driving me nuts. Especially when she started going on about how Captain James Kirk is so attractive and all of the inappropriate things she would have liked to do to you.  
  
I mean hell, that’s nothing new – and you wipe that grin off your damn face right now – but she was distracted all damn day. If she weren’t so good at diagnosis I’d turf her in a heartbeat.   
  
And hell if she didn’t start getting me all distracted too. I would tell you some of the things I would like to do to you, but even with your genius encryption, I don’t trust that someone won’t hack these messages anyway and then they’ll be made public record in a few years. Not that they probably won’t be made public record at some point, but I would rather that the world as it were didn’t know exactly how much of an old pervert I can be. (Which is clearly the only way I would be with someone who would make lists that filthy while at work.)   
  
I may have downloaded the news segment to my personal PADD. I figure I can just play your diplomacy babble next time I find it difficult to fall asleep.   
  
Otherwise, training for the clinic is underway. The days are long, the food is terrible – I would give my soul for an honest to goodness Georgia peach by now, but we’re making solid progress. I’ll probably see if Johnson can’t add some lines into the clinic to upload some medical journals, that speed things up some. Yes, Jim, Rho III is getting old fast. I think I’m ready to be back.   
  
  
From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
Sent: 10.7.2264 10:32FST  
To: Kirk, James CAPT  
Subject: requests of bourbon  
  
This past week I realized that Molly’s fantasy is actually a damned threesome and I’m a main feature while you sit there and tell us what to do. Like I would ever listen to you. Fool of a woman should know better.   
  
But it is far more than I want to know about my staff, temporary or otherwise. I have to work with her now knowing full well she’s probably thinking of me in all sorts of vile positions.   
  
Speaking of, we are never letting anyone in medical get reassigned or transfer because like hell am I going to train another bunch of idiots to try to not kill my patients. That also means you can’t let any of the senior medical officers get killed either when they escort landing parties. Although really, who the hell am I kidding? If you’re going down to some god-awful planet, I’m coming with you because I’m the only one who can keep your ass alive.   
  
And we both you know you’ve kept mine alive, still do.   
  
The worst was Molly getting a bit hands on the other day – makes me wish that I had copious amounts of bourbon to make it all go away. Now, don’t get me wrong she’s a decent gal, but so far out of her league it’s not even funny – I don’t even think you would give her the time of day. And I know full well the extent and truth of your reputation then at the Academy and before it, so don’t get all indignant and no that was not any sort of doubt, just fact.   
  
Also I hope to hell you’re keeping a list named some ridiculously long thing like “Things that Jim will bring Bones when he and Enterprise get their CMO off that awful rock Starfleet calls an Earth colony” … which at the moment includes peaches and bourbon, and I won’t say no to a god damn blow job while you’re at it. If you do well enough maybe I’ll return the favor.  
  
Back to the Molly thing, after she got far too friendly, I politely explained to her that there was no chance in hell that was going to happen. I got mine. Even if he is about a full day at warp four away probably trying to get his neck broken saving some equally stupid ensign. If you die on me while I’m stuck on Rho III, I’ll bring you back to life just to kill you myself. I haven’t saved your ass all those times for you to just throw it away when I’m off ship.   
  
Oh and don’t forget on 10.10 at 23:59 FST to look toward Alpha Centauri…JoJo will be doing the same, might be nice to know that even light years away we can all still be looking at the same bit of space.   
  
I definitely do not miss you, kid.  
  
  
From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
Sent: 24.7.2264 20:24FST  
To: Kirk, James CAPT  
Subject: so hurry up and get on the scene!  
  
You know, I hate you and your damn sex drive. And damn your promises while we’re at it. Before I could easily go a few weeks without and now, well damn, it’s all I keep having dreams about. And my hands just aren’t cutting it when the real thing’s so much better. So, sorry for cheating on you with dream Jim, but he’s just far more flexible and frankly isn’t quite as flippant, it’s actually a nice change. Well, at least until it gets boring as hell because there’s no damn edge. Of course then I always wake up dry humping one of the damn pillows like I’m sixteen again.   
  
And I bet you’re feeling a might bit pleased with yourself right about now.   
  
Well, I hope you’re just as uncomfortable as I am over this whole mess. And that after I get back on board neither of us is on schedule for at least two days (add that to the list too). I’ll have you squirming pretty in that captain’s chair for at least a week at the onset.   
  
Yes, that is a promise, kid, and you know damn well I always keep my promises.   
  
Also never let me agree to this sort of service again, even if we both now it wasn’t really a choice. Dangerous and infectious diseases (don’t even start, I have protocols I follow, safety measures and all, you ruin gold shirts like it’s your actual job) I’ll take on whenever, but humanitarian efforts to try to set up an up to date medical system that any ‘Fleet doctor could have done is a damn waste of resources. It’s an insult they think the flagship will survive without her CMO.   
  
Off to have unfulfilling sex with dream Jim., here’s wishing you a dream Bones to leave you wanting come morning.   
  
  
From: McCoy, Leonard LCDR  
Sent: 31.7.2264 23:56FST  
To: Kirk, James CAPT  
Subject: one Mrs. McCoy was nightmare enough  
  
You know, the colonists recently started calling me “Mrs. James Kirk.” You wouldn’t have something to do with that would you? (And why I continue to ask questions I already know the answers to is beyond me.)  
  
Because like hell am I Mrs. Anything. I am a doctor, not some piece of property! Doctor Leonard Horatio McCoy and don’t make that face you know well that’s the name my mama gave me and it suits me just fine. Not that Bones isn’t good and well too, but only from you. And really you only get to give me one nickname and Bones already stuck.  
  
I swear to god if you’re not on time to get me off this rock, you’re sleeping on the floor for a full week. Oh there will be sex, but it will be the sort where I’m a stingy lover and take you to the edge just to leave you there. And that’s not an empty threat at all. (Don’t think I forgot about the peaches and bourbon either.)  
  
The clinic is fully up and running and the staff is able to not kill any patients who ought to live. And I got word from ‘Fleet medical that a new batch of lieutenants are on their way to oversee the rest of this project. So get your insufferable ass here ASAP. I want to go home.


	8. Forever

**Year Five - July 2263**  
Jim Kirk never thought he would get married or ever propose to someone. Hell, he never really wanted to be married. When he was young he dreamt of running away from everything life saddled him with. The thought that he would be able to find a safe place to settle as much as anyone who was born to run could ever settle was a bonus, but not a necessity. And it certainly wasn’t a person.  
  
But if there was ever a thing he didn’t see coming, Bones beat them all tenfold.  
  
To an extent, it is something he has always known, but it’s taken him the better part of eight years to really figure it out. There’s nothing exceptional about this morning. In every way it’s just another day in San Francisco on leave before Enterprise ships out for another five years. Jim has always found these sorts of mornings effortless, ever happy to just stay in bed for a little while longer while Bones putters around the apartment passing as home for the next couple of weeks.  
  
He loves being captain, but he also loves lazy mornings spent wrapped up in the scent of Bones as the doctor stumbles around trying to make breakfast. The layout of the apartment is such so that with the door open he can see right into the kitchen and every couple of minutes Bones pops into view and his face lights up all over again.  
  
“You coming back anytime soon?” He calls out, the bed losing too much of its warmth. Even Bones’s delicious pancakes are too high a price to pay for a cold bed.  
  
“Stop being an infant, I’ve only been gone thirty minutes, the first half of which you were still asleep.”  
  
“Doesn’t mean I didn’t miss you, ass.” His tone is light, filled with the promise of laughter and really just promises. He’s been thinking a lot about those since they returned to Earth because five years is a long time and he knows there’s another five ahead of them.  
  
Jim shifts in the bed so he is fully seated on Bones’s side because he can and waits for the doctor to come back. It takes Bones exactly 93 seconds to walk back into the bedroom. Not that he’s counting or anything. Or that he really has the attention span to keep counting when he sees Bones barefoot and wearing little more than a pair of boxers and a threadbare t-shirt with a plate of banana pancakes and real maple syrup in his hands.  
  
“I knew there was a reason why I kept you around all these years,” says Jim before he tugs Bones back onto the bed. Bones doesn’t say anything. He just rolls his eyes trying to subdue a smile that Jim doesn’t have to see to know it’s there and just what it means. The pair takes a moment to rearrange on the bed into an all too familiar position that allows for closeness but freedom of movement. Jim remembers the hundreds of times they have sat like this over the years, content to share space while working on paperwork, reading for pleasure or really any other number of things including breakfast in bed.  
  
They eat in companionable silence because the way Jim sees it they don’t really need to fill every moment with sound. Not to mention he’s always been a much more tactile person, able to telegraph whole conversations in body language alone, and luckily that’s a language that Bones speaks too.  
  
Still, there are some things that merit words.  
  
“In the retrofit,” Jim starts after setting down his fork, “I asked for the captain’s quarters to be expanded to properly accommodate two people.”  
  
Bones pauses, forgetting to chew for a moment before he looks over at Jim. For the life of him Jim wishes he could know what was going on in his head. Does he know the words Jim can’t bring himself to say? And if does will he accept them willingly because he wants it and not because he thinks that Jim does?  
  
Jim knows he’s not so young anymore. He’s thirty-one now and even if society and Starfleet expectations didn’t kindly nudge him into a place where marriage was something he should consider, he has stopped running a long time ago.  
  
Jim has grown up a lot in the past five years. He has stepped too close to the edge only to be brought back by the man in his bed and knows that life if too short and full of variables to not want something more. Now he wants something consistent, something sure that he can always come back to, but really something binding to make him always want to come back. And yes, it’s always been Bones, but he needs it to be Bones in a more definite way before he gets on that ship again because while he’s not as fast as he once was, he’s still just as protective over his crew and still just as reckless.  
  
“Jim.” Bones sounds annoyed and that’s never a good sign. “You know they won’t do that unless…” There’s a pause that can only last three seconds at the most but Jim feels like it’s an eternity left hanging there. “Oh.” Jim can see the hint of happiness around the wrinkles in his eyes. “Damn it, Jim.”  
  
Jim exhales hearing the affection in that voice. His whole body seems to relax at the utterance of those all too familiar words.  
  
“Look, there doesn’t have to be any fancy ceremony,” he starts before Bones has a chance to go off on some rant, “just a few signatures and that’s it.”  
  
“You know that’s a piss poor way to propose to someone.”  
  
“Alright how about this.” Jim shifts so he doesn’t have to crane his neck funny to see all of Bones. “We made it through the first five years, now I’m asking you for another five and then the five after that until there is nothing left to ask.” He takes the other man’s hands in his own. These are the hands that have kept him safe, kept him together for what feels like forever and he doesn’t want that to go away. He wants that damn class ring Bones wears to be more than a memory of three rushed years at the academy. “There are just so many things I want to share with you, I don’t think it would be right if you weren’t there with me for all of it.”  
  
Jim can see Bones smile despite himself. He wants nothing more than to kiss away any of the worry that remains if only because it’s more practical than strangling Jocelyn and all the other people who stomped on this beautiful heart because he might be a famous starship captain, but it’s unlikely that he would get away with premeditated murder. And then it really wouldn’t change anything.   
  
If Jocelyn never happened the man in front of him wouldn’t be the same man, and he loves the cracks, grump and everything else. Jim has always seen it as the hard coating that protected the delicious chewy center that only a few people got to see the depth of. (He considers himself lucky every day to be invited in.)  
  
There is the ghost of a scowl on Bones’s face – the sort that means he’s deep in thought. His lips are pursed just so and it takes everything Jim has to not reach forward and kiss him just then, but he decides to give him time to come to this conclusion on his own.  
  
“You sure about this?” Bones says after a whole minute. It’s far from a breathless repetition or affirmation, but for the two of them it might as well be.  
  
Jim just smiles, knowing exactly how to respond. “Are you?” He raises his eyebrow doing a poor imitation of his lover and perhaps his first officer, who are both known for far too expressive eyebrows - although Jim prefers Bones’s more and that might be bias, but he’s surprisingly okay with that.  
  
“No.” It’s a whisper that nearly breaks Jim’s heart, but he waits. He has spent years making deals with people and he knows when there’s more to say. “But there’s no one else, kid. Hasn’t been anyone else in a while and I don’t think there will be ever.”  
  
It’s Bones who leans forward to press their lips together. It’s simple and easy. They have done this so many times by now they could easily do it in their sleep (and they have) but while awake it’s always filled with intent and purpose. And Jim knows this kiss is screaming ‘I love you and it scares me to death but I’d rather die if that is what it takes.’  
  
And that’s okay because it scares him a little bit too.  
  
  
 **Year Five - July 2263 (three days later)**  
True to his word there isn’t any fancy ceremony. McCoy was forced through the uncomfortable tux and priest thing once and only managed because he was somewhat drunk the entire time. (In hindsight he should have known then it wasn’t going to end well.) And for his part, Jim is content to make this as much of a non-event as possible. His life is already filled with so much pomp and circumstance it seems only fitting that his approximation of a wedding be a laid back affair.  
  
In reality, the ‘wedding’ is little more than a semi-formal dinner with some of the bridge crew, Nurse Chapel, and Admiral Pike at Waterfront a few days later that was happening anyway. It’s little more than a few non- sequiturs between the appetizers and the main course and some easy paperwork.  
  
There aren’t any vows, swearing to obey, or honor. They don’t even exchange rings. Jim and McCoy just lean forward to press familiar lips into a kiss. And if while their kissing McCoy’s hand rests square on Jim’s chest and Jim’s seems preoccupied with the doctor’s hands, well, that’s nothing new.  
  
Except it is. The ball chain necklace that Jim regularly wears now has a very important addition to it. True, there’s not much need for medical alert badges or even dog tags these days, but the first, which actually lists some his more severe allergies was a gift because ‘a little extra precaution never hurt’ and the recent addition – well, that’s just between him and his doctor.  
  
And no one is really looking close enough to see that the ring on McCoy’s pinky isn’t the one he normally wears. (In fact, that one is in one of Jim’s idiotic ‘forever boxes’ along with his father’s, although sometime later he’ll add Bones’s ring to the chain too.) For all intents and purposes it’s still a Starfleet class ring, it just has been made a little more by Jim’s careful craftsmanship and his willingness to annoy their chief engineer because it was something Jim had to do it himself when Scotty could have easily done it better.  
  
For Jim, his body seems to sigh with a newfound completeness. That smile bright in his eyes assures anyone looking that he can now not only take on the world, but change it too. For McCoy it’s subtler. He’s worn a ring before, known of its weight, so it’s all met with an undercurrent of relief when it puts on this one. It is not a rock forcing him to sink to the bottom of a cold ocean, but it feels more like a lifeline now. He feels lighter, the smile on his face growing just a bit, because he’s happy. Honestly and perfectly happy.  
  
They kiss again without any prompt from the world as it were or if there is one they certainly didn’t hear it. But the loud throat clearing from Pike at Jim’s left forces them apart. Perhaps there should be some red cheeks or unease, and maybe it makes them shameless, but there’s no room for embarrassment today.  
  
Even later when Jim’s had too much too drink and is hanging all over Bones much to the chagrin and amusement of the others neither feels the need to back down.  
  
“It’s going to be me and you until the worlds explodes,” Jim says a bit too loudly and perhaps in poor taste considering that even five years past the Battle of Vulcan is not something anyone is going to forget. But this is a day he never thought would happen and he can’t be bothered with political correctness at the moment. “Until there’s no one left who has ever known us apart.”  
  
McCoy is torn between debating the likeliness of that and scolding Jim. Instead he just pulls his arm tighter around the younger man, holding him and pushing him out of the restaurant, back toward their temporary home where they can truly be Jim and Bones, lovers, friends and so much more.  
  
“Don’t need the world to end for that to happen, I don’t think anyone knows us any other way anyway.”  
  
  
 **Year Five - July 2263 again**  
Standing in front of the stove in this almost comfortable Starfleet apartment, McCoy can’t help but think that this was how his life should have turned out. Sure, he’s still somewhat overworked, but he’s a respected doctor in a position to make good in the world with a partner who understands all that entails because he is in a similar position. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but he doesn’t feel like he’s constantly walking on eggshells.  
  
And really it comes down to one simple fact: Jim Kirk is not Jocelyn Darnell.  
  
Physically they might have something in common – McCoy always did have a weakness for blondes with pretty blues eyes, but that’s about where the similarities end. Jocelyn was content to use Leonard to position herself into something better. Whereas McCoy doubts that Jim would know how to really use anyone he cares about because he can barely ask for help when he really does need it. Jim needs him in a way that Jocelyn never did, in way that doesn’t feel like suffocating him but rather filling a need in himself to be important to another person.  
  
He sighs happily as he flips the pancakes on the stove. At this point, he’s sure the whole apartment smells of banana, vanilla and home. Even with having to use rice flour, it feels right to be here half awake making them breakfast.  
  
And he knows this version of him standing barefoot in the kitchen is a facsimile. It’s not real, he’s not this domestic nor does he have much right to be this happy, but for a while it’s nice to pretend. (But really any length of this and he’s sure it would only end in disaster because it’s a bit too Stepford Wife for him to become a daily routine).  
  
He’s sure that Jim is awake right now, probably watching him when he can. A fact that is only confirmed when Jim calls out across the apartment: “You coming back anytime soon?”  
  
McCoy takes the pancakes off the griddle and dumps them onto the plate with the others. “Stop being an infant,” he grumbles because it’s the only way he knows how to respond to that annoyingly longing tone. “I’ve only been gone thirty minutes, the first half of which you were still asleep.”  
  
“Doesn’t mean I didn’t miss you, ass.” And only because he knows Jim can’t see he allows himself a smile as he half cleans up the kitchen. They are a well-matched odd pair.  
  
Taking a sip of his now cold coffee, McCoy picks up the tray and heads back into the bedroom. This isn’t who they really are every day of the year, but it’s the first real leave they have had in almost five years. Sure, there were those few times in between various missions, but even then there was still work to be done. Right now, it’s just Jim and Bones. McCoy is still somewhat surprised they haven’t annoyed the shit out of each other yet because there is simply nothing else to fill their time with. No distractions, just pure and undiluted them. And yet it works.   
  
Jim smiles brightly as McCoy walks into the room, turning on the bed to accommodate him. Although Jim is most certainly on McCoy’s side, he knows it’s not a battle he wants to fight or even consider fighting.  
  
“I knew there was a reason why I kept you around all these years.”  
  
The immediate reaction is a desire to punch Jim, but in a playful sort of way. And like the side of bed thing, he lets it go and settles down on the bed to eat.  
  
He is rough around the edges and Jim is still very much an overgrown child at times. McCoy is always amazed at how they manage to fit together. It’s comfortable and he’s grateful he doesn’t have to forcefully answer pointless questions about his day or what he thinks about any number of stupid things. Jim doesn’t need to be reassured of what they have the way that Jocelyn did. Instead, Jim just knows, which works for McCoy because it’s all he needs as well most of the time.  
  
“In the retrofit,” starts Jim, interrupting the subdued flow of the morning, “I asked for the Captain’s quarters to be expanded to properly accommodate two people.”  
  
McCoy shifts moving the plate to the nightstand at the side of the bed, trying to remember to chew and swallow in the process. “Jim.” He sees the not quite hidden wince in Jim’s eyes, but seriously what did he expect? “You know they won’t do that unless…” Sure, Jim has always been one to bend the rules, but this is taking it a bit far. Only that sort of thing gets passed through if the captain’s spouse is also on board. “Oh.” There are suddenly a whole lot of curse words he would like to let out, but instead he just settles on a classic. “Damn it, Jim.”  
  
He shakes his head. The fear over what he knows is coming next taking over every part of him. However, before he can spiral out of control Jim is there to stall him. Funny how that works.  
  
“Look, there doesn’t have to be any fancy ceremony just a few signatures and that’s it.” It sounds easy enough, but then again Jim has always been a good diplomat despite what he might have said after some missions. The way he positions this scary, suffocating thing like marriage as nothing more than some signatures doesn’t belittle the importance of it as much as it makes it more approachable for McCoy.  
  
He can feel himself a beat away from a smile as he speaks. “You know that’s a piss poor way to propose to someone.” McCoy leans into Jim, making this into yet another game they play because if it’s a game it’s safer. (And okay maybe part of him needs to be talked into this, to hear the reasoning from Jim’s mouth because it won’t be real unless he says it.)  
  
“Alright how about this,” Jim’s body language mirrors McCoy’s, “we made it through the first five years, now I’m asking you for another five and then the five after that until there is nothing left to ask.” It’s far from the half proposal he went through with Jocelyn. That was nothing more than a ‘if we’re going to have this kid, we should get married first’ and if that wasn’t another warning sign… But he doesn’t have time to dwell on that proposal when Jim is laying out theirs, which is far more important right now. “There are just so many things I want to share with you, I don’t think it would be right if you weren’t there with me for all of it.”  
  
Yeah, this one totally beats his without any effort and probably for dozens of other reasons too. The words ring true inside him. He followed Jim into the black, and was sure he was going to follow him to the end of the world. McCoy just needed Jim to understand what he was asking.  
  
“You sure about this?” It’s not an outright ‘yes,’ but it’s not a ‘no’ either. He’s equivocating, but he knows Jim can maneuver around it just fine.  
  
“Are you?” It’s a simple question, but McCoy can see all that it means in his eyes. It’s yes, I’m sure and I get this won’t be easy, but we’ve been through hell and back and I want more than what we had. He can see that Jim wants the other pieces and trappings in a way that he’s never wanted anything else. And it’s damn scary that McCoy can read all that in Jim, but there really are no secrets left between them at this point.  
  
“No,” he says. He looks down at his left ring finger where a ring used to sit. McCoy remembers well the weight of that vow, how it seemed to complicate and ruin what had been a good thing. He knows that Jim doesn’t understand that yet, not really. And then there’s that stupid part of him that knows he could protect and preserve himself by saying no and leaving it at that. But damn it, and that’s really the damn it, Jim, but he wants this too. He wants the trappings and the finality of it because it’s Jim. “But there’s no one else kid. Hasn’t been anyone else in a while, and I don’t think there will be ever.”  
  
It’s too much of a confession. All he can do is cover it by leaning forward and pulling Jim into a kiss. It’s gentle and familiar feeling like the first time and the last time all rolled into one.


	9. Nothing Else Would Matter

**Year Six – Spring 2264**  
It is supposed to be easy. Hell, he and Bones acted like they were married well before they didn’t quite say I do, but certainly did sign the paperwork in front of Pike just a few months ago. So, what really has to change?  
  
Okay, so Bones wears a slightly different ring around his finger, there is a rack that properly fits two people – not that the extra space prevents them from waking up piled on the left side most mornings, but to the world as it were nothing really seems to change. They are still Jim and Bones, and as the Captain and the CMO the physicality between them doesn’t change. Jim doesn’t more frequently find excuses to bother Bones in sickbay, and Bones doesn’t show up on the bridge any more or any less often. The frequency of lewd comments in public that fall so effortlessly from Jim’s mouth (although Bones’s too when he’s in a mood) still happen and produce the same result – namely an eye roll and usually a swat for good measure.  
  
Nothing seems to change until it does. And even then it’s subtle. Like how Jim doesn’t always throw himself head first into situations that will leave him in pieces for Bones to put back together. He still leaps, but now he takes pause to consider the added weight to the chain around his neck. In a weird, but not unwanted sort of way, actions seem to have consequences that he didn’t anticipate.  
  
It’s not that Jim ever thought his death would weigh easily on Bones’s mind, but he could always invent a handful of excuses as to why it wouldn’t be that bad. After all, they weren’t that serious. Sure, they shared a bed and really their lives, but Bones delighted in other pleasures just as Jim did – although perhaps to a far lesser scale. So, it wasn’t like Jim was it for Bones. Or at least that’s what he thought it was before he convinced Bones to marry him knowing full well what Bones thought about marriage. The fact that Bones agreed threw that theory right out the airlock.  
  
The metaphor Jim likes to make was that for Bones, Jim was water. He could indulge in other beverages (and Jim knew quite well how he could indulge both literally and figuratively), but at the end of the day he still need water to be satisfied. Sure, you could drown in it if you had too much, but Bones knew his limits and also knew when a little bit of drowning was okay. Or even when they both needed to dry out a bit and seek things that could hydrate but not sate. But if he didn’t have it, he would wilt like the ivy plant his third class, second semester roommate at the Academy insisted on keeping but always forgot to water.  
  
And he can’t let Bones wilt (because maybe Bones is water for him too). It is those kind of scary but thrilling realizations that bring him into moments like this.  
  
It’s only a twelve-hour rotation, but it’s the first semblance of shore leave they have had since they started back on their second tour of duty. And his decision to wear the chain (to which Bones’s class ring was recently added to) on the outside of his shirt is not at all about that look Bones gets when he sees the metal objects resting in between his pectoral muscles. And while he’s not going shirtless, the t-shirt he is wearing leaves little to the imagination – not that anyone really needs to use theirs because Captain Kirk loses or rips his shirt more times than even he thinks is statistically possible.  
  
And if when he’s getting dressed he notices a very intent stare from Bones, he is definitely not wearing the ring on display for Bones. And it sure as hell isn’t for anyone at the bar tonight because even if they see the ring, they are too distracted by bright blue eyes or how his Adam’s apple moves when he laughs to really think about what a ring might mean.   
  
There might also be the fact that he’s flirting shamelessly with a very attractive brunette at the bar.  
  
The woman is beyond the conventional standard of pretty. She is the sort of woman who could walk out of here with anyone in this bar and she knows it. Only Jim knows she knows, which makes this exactly the sort of game he has missed because Bones still doesn’t really know how attractive he is. Not that things with Bones aren’t great. It’s just not quite this game of give and take because with Bones it’s always been a sure thing. And that’s why he will always keep coming home to Bones. Of course it doesn’t hurt that Bones all but pushed him toward the woman with a swat to his ass and a ‘go get her.’  
  
Jim knows that Bones likes to watch him in his element. Gets off on this perhaps just as much as Jim does and if goes too far and induces some doctory jealousy, well that’s just plain awesome too. (Because it means that Bones wants to possess him and Jim’s someone who wants to be possessed.)  
  
And really it’s harmless, flirting as foreplay and the woman is really nothing more than an extra in a production that she isn’t aware that’s happening around her. It’s a careful caress, the way his body so effortlessly telegraphs desire and promises that aren’t quite for her, but she’s not smart enough to figure that out.  
  
“I bet you could tell me all sorts of stories about the stars,” she says her breath warm on his skin and sticky sweet like Cardassian Sunrises. She soft and curvy in all the ways that Bones is not and for a moment, it’s almost too easy to lean a bit closer, to place a hand on her hip. He thinks he knows where this is going and to some extent he welcomes it, until he realizes the rules changed without telling him first.  
  
The brunette with the brilliant green eyes grins and pulls him by the chain, her delicate but foreign fingers wrapping around the badge and ring there as she pulls him into a kiss. Part of his brain is thinking about how this woman feels pressed up against him and urges him to just go with it because it could be fun, but the larger part of his mind is screaming out that this is wrong.  
  
Wrong simply for the fact that she is touching something that belongs to Bones. Jim breaks off the kiss feeling all out of sort, which is not on. He’s James Mother Fucking Kirk, and he does not feel uncomfortable in his skin and certainly not enough for it to show. And it is definitely showing right now.  
  
Jim is sure that some halfhearted excuse falls from his lips, but his mind is racing at warp four on other things to really give it too much thought. The woman for her part doesn’t go running, she just smiles, presses a kiss into his hand and tells him not to be too long.  
  
Bones, who has been watching the whole damn show, has a bemused look on his face as he sets down his Marker’s Mark. When Jim settles into the space next to him he just raises an eyebrow. For a moment neither of them speak to each other, although Jim does manage to order another drink.  
  
“This is just pathetic,” he says. “Kid, you never needed my permission before, but hell if you’re that nervous, I’ll take one for the team. You invite her back and I’ll direct you through the whole thing.”  
  
His hand absentmindedly goes around the items on the chain and he starts to settle. (It’s less on display now, not that it’s secret, because it’s never been a secret, but it’s protected now.) Jim turns to look at Bones, seriously considering the offer. Because damn, the only thing more exciting than some strange sex with the brunette across the bar would be that situation plus Bones sitting off to the side the whole time telling them what to do. But maybe he wants something else…  
  
Jim throws back his drink before a wide smile slips across his face. “Or we’ll just forget her and see how the rest plays out.”  
  
Bones returns the smile – a sort of smile that Jim is sure that only he gets to see – and finishes his drink in a similar fashion. “Boy, you’re just asking for trouble,” he says before he starts out of the bar.   
  
And maybe he is, but Jim thinks it’s exactly the sort of trouble he likes.  
  
So, he doesn’t really notice it, but it is different. He is changing little by little. When he does see a change, he thinks it’s just akin to growing older. As long as they are laugh lines, he’s okay with the natural progression of things.  
  
Just as their lives are becoming more intertwined Dramia II happens.  
  
Per usual, the senior officers are gathered around the table in the debriefing room. Jim doesn’t even need to make exceptions for all of the bridge crew to be here. This time around they all belong. Looking around the table Jim is always surprised that so many from the first tour opted to sign on for another, but he knows that he won’t be so lucky next time around. Sulu is already looking forward to a ground posting teaching at the Academy for a while, and the captain of Reliant is already after Lt. Chekov for his bridge and possibly his first officer. Then there’s Spock, who could already have his own ship, and Jim knows he won’t stay again and he’ll take Uhura with him. Scotty will stay with the ship. He is a lifer in the exact same way that Jim is. The only unknown variable is Bones, and Jim always tries not to think too much about that because he knows Bones would sign off if he asked, but he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life asking.   
  
“It is my official recommendation to place Doctor McCoy in the landing party as he has a history with the Dramians that might prove a useful tool,” says Spock.  
  
“Useful?” Bones starts. “I haven’t been to that rock in over a decade –”  
  
“Precisely 11 years, six months, and eight Terran days, doctor. Your inoculation program marks the last recorded Federation contact with the planet.”  
  
“Right, it’s been a damn long time and all I remember of that planet is that during my time there an unknown strain of the Saurian virus presented itself in the population. Sure, I found a cure, but the virus started to mutate again, so I was told to leave my notes and declare the whole planet quarantine, that’s why no one’s been there since.”  
  
“I am well aware of the quarantine, Doctor. However, Starfleet deems that an acceptable amount of time has passed and we are to reestablish contact.”  
  
“And that right there is the problem. Have you ever seen the Saurian virus affect a healthy immune system? Of course not, damn hobgoblins are immune to that virus, but let me refresh your memory. It’s fever, excessive salvation, swelling of the face and tongue, difficulty breathing and if you’re real lucky your tongue rots off, not to mention torsion of the neck and lesions of the hands and feet that might result in lameness. And that’s the standard strain, the one down there is lethal and who knows what it’s gone and done in 11 years, six months, and eight damn days.”  
  
“We have our orders.” Spock’s voice is curt and Jim knows that’s the Vulcan equivalent of annoyance. He has to suppress a smile in Uhura’s direction because she’s not the only one who can understand Vulcan nuances.  
  
“So we’ll follow quarantine protocol,” says Jim. He places his hand on Bones’s shoulder, “Which is why it makes sense to place you in the landing party.” It might be an order, but he would never say it so directly. Instead, Jim keeps going to refocus Bones on something he can control rather than all the things he cannot. “How long will it take to vaccinate the away team against the Saurian virus?”  
  
Bones picks up his PADD and taps it a few times, searching through the hundreds, if not thousands, of files he has stored in there to locate the right one. “I should be able to replicate the vaccine over night.”  
  
“Great.” Jim claps his hands together. “The landing party will assemble in the transporter room at 0800, standard dress, everyone should review outbreak prevention protocol and make sure to stop by sickbay for a full work up before we depart.”  
  
“Ahh, Jim, I don’t think I’ll be able to manipulate the vaccine in that time to make it safe for you and I’m sure as hell not letting you go down there without it.” It’s in moments like these that Jim is unsure if that’s Bones his CMO or Bones his partner speaking. He doesn’t even want to consider that at times those different faces might be the same because that would damn scary – even if they have collided in the past.  
  
He tries not to look disappointed because he really wants to see the planet where Bones might be something of a big damn hero for saving them when he was still a young doctor. “I have paperwork I need to catch up on anyway. The team should be fine without me.” Jim keeps a neutral tone, but the people in this room have known him for far too long to not see through it.  
  
And of course none of them want to stick around. “Permission to shove off, sir?” says Sulu eager to get back to his other duties. Or perhaps out of this before things start to fall out as they all know it will.   
  
Jim nods. “Get out of here.” None of them need to be told twice. They are all up and out of their chairs, well except Bones who is looking at Jim waiting for the other shoe to drop. “You too Bones, I know you have work to do.” That earns him a look asking if this conversation is done or not and Jim isn’t really sure, so he just shrugs.  
  
The next morning Jim is there to see them off. Okay so he’s mostly there to see Bones off in that sort of subvert way they always see each off – at least there are actual reasons for either of them to be there. (Unlike some couples with Uhura making up reasons to assure the communications link are functioning and they always are working.) They don’t kiss or look longingly at each other. Bones just says, “Try not to get so bored you start looking for things to explode while Chapel is overseeing sickbay she doesn’t need to deal with it.”  
  
After they are gone, Jim doesn’t linger because he does actually have a lot of paperwork to go through. It goes well until he gets a message of an incident and the away team is coming back sooner than expected one man short. And he certainly does not run down the halls to the transporter bay. He’s certainly not chanting in his head – Not Bones, not Bones, not Bones. Or wondering what the hell could go wrong in the not quite two hours they have been down there.  
  
(And his heart certainly doesn’t drop in his stomach when he sees that it was Bones.)  
  
The only thing worse is the ten minutes it takes to go through decontamination. Not knowing is so much worse. Once Spock has been cleared he pulls the Vulcan aside. “Report.” Luckily that’s all he needs to say because he’s not sure he’d be able to say anything more.  
  
“Captain, it would appear that during the quarantine period, a disease the Dramians call the McCoy Plague, killed over half of the colony’s population.” While sometimes annoying, right now Spock’s calm and collected demeanor is soothing for him. His head might be a hurricane of emotion and worry, but he needs to keep his wits about him because Bones is going to need to be rescued. “Once the Dramians identified Doctor McCoy he was taken into custody, I believe they are planning to publicly execute him following a trial.”  
  
His mind wants to latch onto the fact that Bones is going to be killed and it’s his fault. Not that he could have known, but he’s the captain and he’s responsible for every member of his crew. Instead he hears a gruff voice point out the fact that he has time. “Okay,” he says, trying to steady his voice, “Spock, I need a team to figure out exactly what this ‘McCoy Plague’ is and another to manipulate the vaccine for me. I would like to have a word with the Dramians in person.”  
  
It takes thirty-two hours to assure that the vaccine won’t kill Jim and it’s thirty-one hours too long as far as he’s concerned. And really what was a little rotted tongue? However, the unstoppable pair of Spock and Uhura keep him from doing anything too brash while the medical team works.  
  
The moment he can, Jim throws himself into negotiations, trying to get Bones out in a way that Starfleet would approve of. When that doesn’t work, he starts thinking what does Starfleet know? This is Bones and he doesn’t deserve to be killed for doing his job. Except Uhura is picking up the Dramian News where they are all celebrating the public torture of the man who created a plague, which nearly wiped them out.  
  
And it was that news that really sends Jim over the edge. Because this is his Bones, the same man who grumbled and bitched his way through the required hand-to-hand training because he was a doctor, not a solider, damn it. Only they both know that he is sometimes a solider and does have to follow orders, but over eleven years ago? Bones was just Dr. Leonard McCoy, ridiculously young and idealistic, but able to back those beliefs up. Jim might not have known him them, but he does know Bones now and can easily imagine who had been then.  
  
It’s entirely fucked up and unfortunate that the fantastic filter he has between his mouth and his brain seems to be malfunctioning when Bones is being held captive and tortured.  
  
“Captain?” Spock says before Jim can go too far down that line of thought, which would certainly be unbecoming of an officer. “Perhaps it would be best to retire to your quarters or your ready room for the remainder of your shift.”  
  
Jim looks at Spock about ready to snap at him too, because there’s no way he gets it, but he knows that Spock is right. He is in no mindset to be on the bridge right now, not with that stupid newsreel fresh on his mind. (He’s honestly not sure how the others are doing it because they know Bones too, but then again they don’t know him like Jim does.) “Yeah, I think I’ll do that. Spock, you have the con.”  
  
While it would hurt to see any of his crew down there, Bones is more than just a member of his crew. So, when he can’t sleep anymore he starts to drink alone in their quarters, which are too big for him, it’s just a natural progression of things.   
  
Uhura joins him one night, about ten days in. She doesn’t drink as much as she sits there with him, trying to assure him that it’s all going to be all right and allows him to curl into her like a child desperately clinging to his mother. (Only Jim and Winona never had that sort of relationship.) Part of Jim wonders if this is what she and Bones might do when he and Spock go missing on a mission.  
  
“I just thought that it would be me and Bones and nothing else would matter.” He chases the words with another drink. Tonight he’s going to be drunk, tomorrow he’ll get up and keep trying. Even as it takes pieces and pieces of him because this is what he wanted.  
  
It takes three weeks to get Bones physically back on the ship. And while on the outside he comes back mostly in one piece, Jim can see the lines and all of the scars that no tricorder is going to pick up. So, he does the only thing he can do and pulls himself from the duty roster for a week.  
  
For that whole week he sits at Bones’s side, always there but not touching because Bones doesn’t want to touch. Bones is the ghost of a man he loved and he understands better than some people might believe because Jim Kirk was a ghost too. Only he can’t handle seeing Bones like this. And he certainly wasn’t able to handle the conversation with Joanna about promises he didn’t quite break, but surely came close.  
  
Eventually McCoy gets cleared for duty again. He goes through the motions, performing his job to the best of his ability, except he doesn’t take risks anymore. Bones hasn’t touched his research since he came back and doesn’t light up when they visit a new planet or get a medical support request. Instead he recoils into himself and Jim doesn’t know what to do.  
  
(He just hopes that it doesn’t take seven years for Bones to become corporeal again like it did with him.)  
  
There is a sigh of relief when Bones agrees to the Rho III short-term assignment. He’s finally taking initiative. And honestly, Jim is grateful for the eight weeks it will allow when he won’t have to censor his actions around the other man because he doesn’t know how Bones will react. Instead he hopes that those eight weeks will heal the doctor on his own terms.  
  
Then the communications start coming. And it’s perfect. Jim sends short replies. He is candid as ever with subtle reassurances and promises. It’s not easy, but it’s not as bad as it has been for the past couple of months. For Jim, the chase is happening again and every message is a silent ask (or maybe a plea) for Bones to fall in love with him again, but really just to come back to him.  
  
So, when Bones says he’s ready to come home, Jim’s heart leaps from his chest. Only to be replaced with fear and worry that when Bones is back in space again all that progress will be lost. Jim always did like Bones best dirtside, in his natural habitat in a way that Jim sometimes thinks he could be okay staying planet side with Bones, but then there’s that perverse pleasure in knowing that Bones is in space because Jim asked him.  
  
It’s confusing and if he has the helm plot a course that is a bit longer than necessary it’s not because he’s avoiding Bones. No, he just has orders to follow.  
  
“Please don’t give up on me, yet,” he whispers to the stars.


	10. Grant Me Grace

**Year Four - February 2261**  
Some days Leonard McCoy really hates his job. It isn’t because he is a doctor out in the black because really in the big scheme of things as long as he doesn’t have to regularly deal with transporters or shuttles, he sort of loves that part of his job. No starbase or land posting could ever allow him the wealth of discoveries and medical breakthroughs he is able as the CMO on the ‘Fleet’s flagship. (Of course having Jim in charge doesn’t hurt either.)  
  
He wasn’t wrong all those years ago in Riverside either because space was full of disease and danger. McCoy simply forgot the fact that he was one of the best at what he did and could cure a good number of those diseases and find ways to cut back on the danger all across the universe. Now, he honestly can’t imagine himself enjoying or even thriving in his career anywhere else.  
  
Running sickbay he is able to treat patients, perform some difficult surgeries, and still have time to pursue his research in ways that he wouldn’t be able to in a traditional hospital position where higher ups would hover and effortlessly gum up the works. Instead he controls the medical employees and the only person he has to immediately report to, who could impede his work in any way, is the captain. And Jim always has encouraged his crew to excel in their fields and break all the preconceived notions regardless of whether or not they also share his bed.  
  
Perceived favoritism has never truly be a problem for them – if only because of how often the captain and the CMO disagree with each other and neither are hesitant to pull rank if they have to.  
  
It is wonderful in many ways, but damn frustrating in many others.  
  
The problem is often when he has to come to terms with the reality that he is a medical officer. Sometimes Starfleet protocol interferes with his personal oath of first do no harm because the Prime Directive left room for a whole world of harm to happen when it could be prevented.  
  
So of course when he finds that the native population of Gliese II are facing extinction due to a group of anthropologists who didn’t follow their own protocols close enough and introduced a new virus into a system that couldn’t handle it he had to do something. It was a curable disease and really it is just reversing the interference already done when he and a small team make contact.   
  
Unfortunately that’s when he runs into a world of trouble.  
  
With Ambassador Wynn on board, Jim has no other option but to be the captain and order his CMO to stand down and report to his quarters (which he hasn’t actually slept in for months now) for the remainder of the mission. It makes him feel absolutely useless. And it’s entirely the sort of day that makes him miss his daughter more than he normally does and regret ever joining this bullshit filled peacekeeping armada.  
  
He is just about start trying to deal with that feeling in his gut when the comm. on his wall chirps. Without thought he reaches forward to activate the system. “McCoy here.”  
  
“I have an Elizabeth McCoy on the line for you,” says Uhura, her tone polite as always although he can’t help but notice some sympathy in the cadence of her words. “Would you like me to patch her through?”  
  
McCoy is taken back, because he didn’t know they were in range for live communications, but never one to look a gift horse in the mouth he doesn’t question it. “Yeah, patch her through.” He settles back into the plush chair by his personal desk and sips at the bourbon in his glass waiting for Uhura to transfer the call.  
  
He looks up just as her face appears on the viewer. The woman never seems to change anymore, her white hair is pinned back carefully and despite the lines and wrinkles on her face her eyes burn with life. “There you are, boy!”  
  
“Hello Gram,” he says forcing himself to sit up a little straighter and appear to be respectable.  
  
“Oh don’t you ‘hello Gram’ me.” He can’t see bellow her shoulders but easily imagines her hands firmly placed on her hips. “I was talking to Jim earlier and I know exactly what sort of trouble you’ve found yourself in the past couple of days.”  
  
“I didn’t find myself in any sort of trouble…” he starts, not bothering to hide his annoyance because the Prime Directive isn’t just bullshit, it’s cowardice and laziness too. Oh and he totally has a full speech on it that he’s waiting to give to the first admiral who will listen without stripping him of everything he clings to.  
  
“I’ll save you the rant, boy,” her tone is stern, but still loving, “because I’ve heard it all before, but you know well what you can and cannot do and there’s only so much Jim can do to fix for your damn stubbornness.”  
  
“Gram, I could have saved thousands of people and now they want to hang me!” McCoy sets his glass down because he knows he’s a moment away from spilling it. And that would just be a poor waste of bourbon. “Hell, if I am going to be out here in the black away from Jo the least I can do is try to fix it!”  
  
“I didn’t say I was done speaking. You mind your elders.” And really, it’s amazing how even light years away one woman can make him feel like a little child who isn’t sure of his place. But this is his gram and she knows him better than he knows himself, so he’ll try. “Jim is good for you, any fool can see that, and you’re good for him. The worst part is it’s clear he bends the rules for you and your crusades at a great cost to himself. You think you got it bad right now? You should have heard what he was telling me or rather what he wasn’t telling me. It’s a reflect of his command if you don’t follow orders you’re given.”  
  
“I didn’t-”  
  
“I get that the banshee of a woman took everything she could from you and left you broken, but you can’t keep taking from him, even if he gives it willingly because that boy would go to the end of the world for you. And I know that more times than not you’d do the same for him, you’re a McCoy after all, but then you get so caught up in your damn doctoring that nothing else matters.”  
  
McCoy knows better than to fight her. Knows because it was what the breaking point of his marriage, but he had hoped he had learned from that. But in all seriousness he was a doctor all the time in the same way that Jim was the captain all of the time, and they could never really be just Jim and Bones.  
  
“You’re a good doctor, Len, but there are more important things than fixing the whole universe because you’ll never be able to do that.” She shakes her head. And he can hear the words she doesn’t want to say, or how the ghost of her late son still hangs between them. Although really it’s always him that puts it there because she has long since come to peace with that bit. More than anything she continues to be his gram, who beats her infinite wisdom over his head until he listens. “You’re happy now and you can’t lose that. So fight for him and work with him, knowing that you got a beautiful girl back here who loves you more than anything and is happy to see you smiling again. Focus on not messing this up because you think you have the right to save the world.”  
  
It’s a lot to take in. So for a minute he just sits staring at her, trying to process it all. And okay, maybe a sip of bourbon helps, but he doesn’t know what to say after that.  
  
“Here’s the part where you say, you’re right, Gram, I’m a damn fool sometimes and I’ll fight for him because I know he’s good for me and I love him as much as I think I love saving the world.”  
  
And her words are mostly true, so he nods in agreement, but he doesn’t repeat them. “I couldn’t save the world if not for him.” It’s a somewhat sudden realization that is scary because it means to some extent he’s quite dependent on Jim, but it rings true all the same.  
  
They chat for a few more minutes about nothing really too important, but his mind is still very much on this new wisdom and how it changes what he already knows.  
  
McCoy waits until morning in a cold and too big bed before he goes to find Ambassador Wynn to try to repair this mess without making it worse. The problem is that Ambassador Wynn is a severe woman, who McCoy believes hates her womanhood almost as much as she hates the fact that she doesn’t have any true power in most situations. She speaks in clipped tones and despite her age has absolutely no laugh lines on her face.  
  
“I understand there has been some concern over my actions, but I was simply following the Prime Directive, ma’am.” He is trying to keep his words polite and to allow some of that slow southern charm into them because Jim’s always said it works to his benefit.  
  
The comment seems to gain the ambassador’s attention. “That is an interesting perspective, Lieutenant Commander, as to my understanding you created a cure for a mass viral outbreak and as a result introduced yourself as a member of Starfleet and the possibility of space travel to a civilization that is decades away from that.”  
  
“Ma’am,” he starts. His whole body is tense and her tone really isn’t helping matters any. “If you read all of the reports you would know that the outbreak was due to a group of anthropologists surveying the planet, who brought with them a virus that was destroying the ecosystem as well as the natives.”  
  
“Lieutenant Commander, that is mere speculation. The anthropologists have their own protocols to follow.” It is then that McCoy knows exactly how the rest of this conversation was going to go.  
  
And yet he knows he needs to continue, to try and convince this nightmare of a woman to withdraw the complaint she placed in the data packet for later today if only to protect Jim from the trouble he’ll find if it goes through. In the big scheme it might not be a huge deal, but there are still people at Command eagerly looking to knock him down a few pegs.  
  
So, he tries to use logic and reasoning to make his point. All the while his inner monologue switches between cursing her out and all sorts of inappropriate things he’s going to do to Jim in an unspoken penance. His mind gets stuck on a line that Jim used last week about wanting to suck his brain out through his cock and McCoy thinks maybe he’ll try that. And oddly enough it’s enough incentive to keep him doing this song and dance.  
  
Sometimes he really did wonder when he regressed into a seventeen-year-old boy, but with Jim it was an inevitable fact. And really he had never properly been a seventeen-year-old boy so he might as well get to experience it now.  
  
“Very well, Lieutenant Commander, I will be sure to keep in mind when I file my report.” It’s not a complete win, but at this point he’ll take what he can get because he’s trying and that has to count for something. Even if he doubts that it will count for anything with the brass.  
  
“Thank you for your time, ma’am.” He tries to say those words like he’s not fed up and about to strangle someone. Normally it would an ideal moment to head down to one of the research bays and work, but he’s not even technically supposed to leave his quarters at this point. So, instead he just heads back to his room, tail between his legs because it’s what Jim needs him to do.  
  
  
 **Year Eight - April 2266**  
Years ago Bones would have done anything for Jim because it felt reciprocal, like they were still on equal footing, but a half dozen or so years down the road, Bones isn’t willing to give so freely even in the smallest matters.  
  
Jim is all excitement and nerves, barely able to contain himself with this good news. It’s not that he really cares about the awards. He just likes getting them because it makes all of those people who ever doubted him get to eat their feet a little. And this time is all the sweeter, because Admiral Shaw swore up and down he was going to be court martialed and stripped of his command, but now Starfleet is honoring him and his crew, the damn finest crew this side of the universe, for going above and beyond the expectations set out for them.  
  
He supposes he could rush down to sickbay, but everyone is already here and waiting for him. They know it’s good news, but most of them think it’s just celebrating that he gets to keep his ship, but that’s not even half of it. And really more than anything he needs Bones right here. (It has never been real unless Bones was at his side.)  
  
“Bones!” He shouts into the comm., barely able to keep it stable in his hands. He may be a thirty-something, but in some aspects he’s never stopped being a kid. “Bones, what are you doing right now?”  
  
The grumble that follows is expected. Hell, it’s even welcome because it might as well be Bones for love. Although lately is seems to be underscored by aggravation or frustration.  
  
“Finishing up my reports for the day,” says Bones. “You know those things you sign off on every night. The ones that I have double of because some idiot of a captain didn’t understand the god damn limits of his body or simple instructions to not incite the natives.”  
  
Jim shakes his head. He is so entirely over that because he’s in one piece and everything is seemingly right in the world. Or at least it would be.  
  
“Well, forget that!” He’s whining, he knows he’s whining, but it has to be sort of cute, doesn’t it? “Come down to rec room…I need to tell you something in person.”  
  
Around him the rec room seems to break out in cheer as glasses clatter and clink in celebration. Jim winces at the sound because he can imagine Bones’s exact reaction.  
  
“That’s great, Jim, I’m glad you’re celebrating the fact that you got damn lucky by encouraging hangovers for a crew who are already working on less sleep than they should.” Jim moves into the corner, hoping to damper some of the background noise. But it’s a halfhearted attempt because he’s not entirely keen to hear the same rant again to a slightly new tune. “You never take anything seriously, sometimes I wonder if this isn’t a big game for you.”  
  
Jim can fill in all the parts at this point. They have had some version of this argument dozens of times before. Only most times it’s between their titles, but lately it’s very much been between the people behind those titles. This is supposed to be a happy moment, he’s supposed to celebrating, not feeling like some child who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  
  
“Bones,” he sighs, “Do we have to do this right now?" Because he really doesn’t want to. It’s been hell for the past week and he just wants it to be better again.  
  
“Do we have to do what again?” Bones snaps across the line and Jim winces.  
  
“Look,” he starts before Bones can start in again, “I just wanted to tell you that we’re getting an accommodation for service above and beyond the call of duty.” His voice is broken, his exhaustion clear, and Bones must get that because his sigh escapes in the same tone.  
  
“I’m tired, Jim. I’m not coming out to celebrate your damn luck while you flirt with everything in a dress.” The unspoken words aren’t missed. They whisper you can’t keep doing this to me, that you should come home rather than act like a fool. And Jim hears them, but he doesn’t really want to hear them, so he hedges.  
  
“Alright, okay. I’ll come by sickbay in an hour and we’ll grab some dinner, okay?” Bones seems to mutter some sort of forced agreement. How he wishes there were actual words or some banter, but its just half sounds don’t quite fill the way they should. Any fun he planned to have seems empty and unattainable. And before Bones can cut the line he exhales the words “I love you” but it sounds more like an apology than anything else.  
  
  
 **Year Four - February 2261**  
Later when Ambassador Wynn is placated and no one is in danger of losing anything, Jim comes creeping into McCoy’s quarters. It’s half of surrender as he stands there, but McCoy can still see the disappointment and struggle burning in those bright blue eyes.  
  
“Bones you can’t do shit like that.” McCoy can see the exhaustion of having to constantly posture clear on Jim. He doesn’t comment on it though, rather he just lets Jim into the room, staying close but not yet touching because he wants to settle what stands between them first. “I may be the poster child for Federation right now, but there’s only so much I can do to keep my CMO from being thrown out on his back.”  
  
Jim, who is very much trying not to be the captain right now, crosses the room and unceremoniously plops down on the bed. He tugs off his gold command tunic as if that will somehow allow him to be just Jim for a few moments because it’s evident that he doesn’t know where the lines are anymore. Hell, McCoy doesn’t even know where the lines are, or which part is the CMO and what is simply who he’s always been. Not that it really matters because he imagines both would do the same thing.  
  
“Damn it, Jim.” McCoy sighs, joining Jim on the bed, but still keeping a small parameter of space between them. He doesn’t want to be some codependent fuck up who takes when he shouldn’t because he knows what that’s like. It’s just hard at the end of the day when you’re in love with your commanding officer – although the words aren’t spoken often enough. “You don’t have to put your ass on the line to protect mine. I’m a grown man, I make my own decisions and I can take the consequences. What we have in here doesn’t…shouldn’t dictate what you do out there.”  
  
He is saying these words as if they can easily divide their worlds, like they might simply fall into separate bins like lights and darks when he’s doing the wash. But of course they are the dark gray shirt. The one that you don’t quite know where to place so you move it back and forth each time.  
  
Jim turns to look at him. There are dozens of words hanging between them and McCoy knows he can reach out and grab any number of them. To understand this conversation in the angles of Jim’s body, in the light in his eyes, in the curve of his mouth that tells him the wheels are turning. Instead he just focuses on Jim’s fingertips brushing against the stubble on his jaw. “No matter what, I am always going to look out for my crew. You know that.”  
  
And he does. So, he doesn’t fight it, but that doesn’t mean he’s quite ready to accept it.


	11. Then Talk to Me

**Year nine - May 2267**  
“Bones!” It is at least the sixth time he has repeated the name by now, but the man just keeps ranting without pause. Going on about nothing and everything. It is the sort of thing that used to be cute. “Leonard!” He shouts, letting that single word echo through their quarters. Jim supposes it’s the unfamiliarity more than anything else that finally grabs the other man’s attention. “Just give me a few minutes and then it can be your turn.”  
  
The doctor nods and sits down on the bed, their bed. Jim would have be relieved if his eyes were burning with fury, or some sort of passion, but they are just empty, annoyed, and maybe a little lost. And that worries him more because this brilliant man who should know his place in the universe, or at least on this ship, is so damn lost right now.  
  
“I get it. You’ve made it very clear that you’re not going.” Jim runs a hand through his still damp hair and swallows the lump in his throat before continuing. He tries to pull his best authoritative voice, not because he wants to remind Bones that he outranks him, but simply because it’s the only way he can say this and not sound pathetic. “But I will be going, and that’s done.”  
  
After the medical accident was dealt with, negotiations with the Zathurans had been going quite well. It didn’t hurt that in their culture that men with blue eyes were seen as dignified leaders. In fact, it was probably a big driving factor into why it hadn’t turned into a complete disaster. With that behind him now there’s a feast to be had and further mining rights in the southern hemisphere to solidify. Even if Jim may not want to go down there because they didn’t take kindly to his doctor, it wasn’t the sort of thing Starfleet was going to allow him to miss.  
  
Their fight had been circling around these points for a quite some time. However, at this moment Jim is doing his best not to think about it and enjoy the momentary silence in their quarters. Even if this silence is tense and tasting of copper, it’s enough for him to sort through all the ridiculous thoughts racing through his head as he continues to dress.  
  
Jim slips easily into his dress golds, pinning all the appropriate awards and recognitions to his chest. Other people look at the medals and see valor, all Jim sees is what he could have done better. He wears them not as badges of honor, but promises to never forget and allow himself to be stagnant in command.  
  
Last he picks up the chain link necklace sitting just where he left it before he went into the shower. (He used to never take it off, now he finds all sorts of unsuspecting ways to shrug off its weight for a few moments.) His fingers trace over the careful engraving of the words “my bones” and he almost smiles. Instead a long sigh escapes him as the chain settles back around his neck and his tucks it under his shirt.  
  
He gives himself a once over in the mirror before turning to look at Bones, who hasn’t moved. “Is it really about the banquet, Bones?” Jim’s voice is tired, very much the man and not the captain as he approaches the bed. “Can you just stop hedging and say what you’re actually feeling? That’s what you asked of me, no lies, no deceptions.” He wants to reach out and take the doctor’s hands in his, to feel that connection, but he’s afraid Bones will pull away. (And of all the things he can handle, Bones turning away from him is not one of them.) “Did you think this was going to be easier than it turned out to be?”  
  
Jim knows the answer, but he needs the other man to say it. Not one moment since they didn’t quite said ‘I do’ was easy, but that was part and parcel. He wanted this. They had both wanted it. Theirs is a relationship built on compromise and a willingness to make it work warts and all.  
  
It had been easy at first (or at least easier), effortless because their lives had always seemed so entirely interwoven. Spock had even called their pairing a logical conclusion. Unfortunately logic didn’t always hold up when it came to the heart.  
  
Bones doesn’t say anything, although Jim suspects he might want to. He doesn’t know whether to be revealed that Bones is actually letting him have his piece or worried that Bones won’t speak now.  
  
“You gotta talk to me, Bones.” It’s not so much a yelling as it is pleading. Jim drops to his knees in front of Bones. While this may not have a new position for them, the circumstance makes it feel alien.  
  
Now he doesn’t hesitate to touch because he needs to feel Bones. He needs to shake him out of this morose silence because the silence is worse. (It reminds him too much of after Dramia II where it took too long to find Bones again.) Rather than shake Bones, Jim simply takes the other man’s hands in his own. Having always had a fascination with these hands it is the best focal point for the both of them. Even if they do carry all the close calls and near misses, they hold the keys to everything else hidden in their history. (Jim just hopes that this isn’t their final chapter.)  
  
“Bones,” he says the name like a prayer rather than a plea, “What happened down there was an accident. You can’t blame yourself.” These words might as well be ritual because after almost every away mission, they are spoken, spoken until they are believed or until words fall away all together and other rituals become more important. “There is no way you could have known that some ancient disease like chicken pox was not only potentially lethal but quite contagious within their population.” He almost smiles, allowing his voice to edge into teasing, because it would be easier if this were a joke. “I mean it was a surprise that West came down with it at all.”  
  
But no one is laughing. If anything the comment just makes those normally beautiful hazel eyes go a bit darker. “I messed up, Jim,” he says finally. The words vibrate with every failure and moment that he wasn’t fast or smart enough to perform another miracle in the past.  
  
“Okay, fine.” Jim agrees because he knows at this point it is all he can do. “You messed up, but we all do. Don’t you always tell me that is a human thing? That I can’t save everyone?” He pauses not awaiting answer, but simply recognition that Bones is actively listening. “Well, you can’t save everyone.”  
  
“But I shouldn’t go making them sick either!” He snaps and Jim’s body relaxes for just a moment because this isn’t Dramia II again. “I’m a healer, Jim, or I’m supposed to…”  
  
Whatever else he was going to say, Jim doesn’t want to hear it as he places his right index finger on Bones’s lips. “Leonard,” and it’s Leonard now because he knows that Bones needs to hear the name his mama gave him more than the one Jim did, “you have saved, and you do save so many people. We only remember the ones we’ve lost, but you are a healer. You perform miracles all the time.”  
  
And of course Bones rolls his eyes at that. He wouldn’t be Bones if he didn’t and Jim almost wants to kiss him right then and there, but they are in the middle of something that they need to see through. They have been teetering here at this point for too long.  
  
It’s only then that Jim removes his hands from Bones’s lips. He sits back on his haunches, so entirely open. “If I wasn’t certain that when it was on the line that you’d always come through somehow, well, I truly wouldn’t be here now.” Sure, he often pushed a bit further than he should, took more risks while injured, but he did so knowing that Bones could fix him. Bones always fixed him, even if he bitched about it all the while. That was a part of who they were too. “You save me all the time, Bones.” As clichéd as it sounded, it was true. “I learned that quickly after that shuttle ride a dozen years ago.”  
  
He might be the captain of the Federation Flagship, but this right here, everything wrapped up in this bedroom scares him more than any approaching Klingon or Romulan vessel.  
  
“It never took me much convincing to make me believe in you, so why does it take so much convincing for me to make you believe in yourself sometimes?” As soon as those words rolled off of his tongue he winces and Bones does too.  
  
“Jim, I’m a country doctor.” Bones shakes his hands free of Jim’s, and Jim isn’t sure what to make of it. So his brain starts to reel: Shit, shit, shit. It will be a full thirty seconds before he’s able to start finding words that could be helpful. “I wasn’t made for space or service, not like you who seems to get it right all of the time despite making it up as you go. All because it’s part of your damn destiny.”  
  
He doesn’t like that tone. Jim knows that tone leads to the yelling part again and he was really liking the not yelling and talking like adults part.  
  
“Shh. It’s still my turn.” He takes a moment to just let the silence sit between them. Neither quite looking at the other. “I just,” he starts and stops before starting again. “When do we get to be happy, Bones? When do you accept that your life is here in the stars just as much as mine is?” Jim keeps his tone light, he’s trying not to accuse, he just want to lay the facts on the table. “You’re daughter is proud of what you do and Medical is constantly gushing over you, why isn’t that enough?” Why aren’t I enough? But he doesn’t ask the last question because that’s a dance the two of them will save for a later date. “Its just there always seems to be some trouble or little aggravation to push us further apart.”  
  
Jim places his hands flat on Bones’s thighs, pushing up on his knees to crowd the other man’s space. “I’m right here, Bones, always cheering on your side, even when I’m giving you gray hairs.” Suddenly, it’s very clear where this is going, where this has always been going. Jim has always been there to help Bones whether it was his fear of flying and space, or even a bad day in sickbay. For the most part, Jim gets back the same level of support he receives, but Bones has been pulling away, finding reasons to doubt and question or grumble along the way. And maybe that has more to do with Bones’s disposition toward the title of captain rather than the actual person, but it’s not always easy to remember. But right now, Jim, who is also the captain, wants Bones, who might be his CMO who made a mistake, but is still his partner to accompany him to this banquet.  
  
“Why can’t you support me? Not in everything, but in the important decisions I do make, or at least go along with the things I have to do.” Was that too much to ask for? Maybe, but Jim’s never really thought of himself as particularly high maintenance, he just likes not having to be alone when he doesn’t have to be. Jim sighs, shaking his head. “I don’t want to feel like some criminal doing what I always told you I would do.”  
  
And that’s what it comes down to, what all of their fights come down to. Bones can’t seem to fully understand why Jim throws himself into danger, why his own body doesn’t seem to matter so much as long as he can protect his crew. He set out into space to discover new worlds, but also to make sure that to the best of his ability every member of his crew had a fighting chance to make it back. Jim’s heart has always been too big and on display if you knew where to look. Beyond the bravado and cockiness it was always about love, cheesy as that might be.  
  
Bones tenses again. Jim knows that move. He’s spent years of negotiations and diplomacy to know when he needs to diffuse a situation.  
  
“Look,” he says in an exhale, “I don’t want you to be miserable, or feel like you’re useless because your research isn’t going anywhere right now.” Jim looks right into those hazel eyes, hoping that Bones gets it. “I think you’re going to be okay, you just have to hang in there. Medical breakthroughs don’t happen over night, even god needed six days to create the world.”  
  
There’s a moment in which there should be laughter. And maybe one of them tries – Jim isn’t sure who, but he knows that the bomb is still counting down. So he does the only thing he can, but also the opposite of what he wants to do and pushes forward.  
  
“Just…you can’t put us on pause or ruin things while you figure out your stuff, okay?” His voice is calm and collected, very aware of who and where he is and how important this moment is to the both of them. “If I could I would give you so many things to help you along, but the one thing I won’t do is compromise my career or my success because you don’t feel like you’re winning right now.”  
  
“Jim, I’m just…I don’t belong out here. I’m becoming a detriment to the crew.” Bones grumbles and Jim is sure he is muttering words under his breath, but he’s not listening. Jim’s not ready to hear what the doctor has to say because he knows it’s not going to be pretty and he’s not done yet.  
  
“You’re just at a rough patch, Bones and I’m not going anywhere because I know you can make it through this. I believe in you, I believe in us. Okay?” Jim wraps his rough fingers around the ring on Bones’s pinky. “That’s what this means, that you’re the one thing I can’t bare to lose. So don’t let me lose you.” He leans forward and kisses the metal ring, a simple gesture that he’s done hundreds of times before. “We’re not going to fail, we agreed on that.”  
  
Only it’s not really about that. It’s about a crisis of faith that sometimes makes Bones impossible to be around. These are his wounds, the cracks that Jim swore he would try to fill in the same way Bones used to be able to fill his and make them both whole in the process.  
  
“Bones, if I didn’t believe in you I wouldn’t have loved you at all.” That seems to calm the doctor. Only Jim’s not sure if the storm has passed or he’s simply standing in the middle of it. Without any way to tell, he just has to jump in the water and hope he doesn’t get struck by lightning. “Now why don’t you put your dress uniform on and we’ll go?”  
  
Jim pushes back onto his feet. He counts to ten in his head, decidedly avoiding Bones’s gaze because he might be a well-decorated Starfleet captain, but sometimes he’s still a coward. “Bones?” He tries to hide the breaking in his voice as he looks up to see the doctor hasn’t moved at all. “I need you there.”  
  
“You need me?” That is not the tone Jim wants to hear. Although some part of his brain is upset with himself for expecting to hear anything else, for hoping that it was going to be better so easily. “The great Captain James T. Kirk needs some doctor who might just be going backward in his research and also introduced an extinct virus into an environment that was ripe for the picking. You won’t –”  
  
“C’mon, that’s not it all.”  
  
“So, then you’re just upset you don’t have some doe eyed companion content to follow you around for the night? Well, I’m not your wife, Jim, and I’m sure as hell not your subservient…”  
  
“Please?” He says even as Bones keeps going off just as he had before. So, Jim raises his voice and repeats the plea, and that’s exactly what it is now. But tonight neither of them is willing to yield.


	12. Totally Mine

**Year One - May 2258**  
What they have is still new. New, a little bit scary, but entirely enthralling and life affirming in ways that he doesn’t know how to make sense of. (But still, he thinks, maybe this is what it means to live and not just survive.) At this point there aren’t many secrets left between them, which is the basis for how they work. Two pieces with jarred edges and darknesses that can really only be explained or shared with someone also  _knows_. Between them they have a wealth of scars physical and emotional that reach as far as genocide, but also a person that Leonard McCoy thought was going to be the last person in the world he would love and handfuls of other things in between. (How Jim fits into this whole mess is something he knows he’ll never figure out. And he doesn’t think he wants to.) While they may not be intimate with the exact details and textures of the darknesses between them, there is a some privately constructed map that assures they don’t bump into sharp edges along the way.  
  
So, this is important. Really important.  
  
After Jim informs him that he has no desire to return to Iowa where all that’s left is an empty house filled with memories of a woman who found it just a little bit easier to love her job than she loved being a mother, McCoy decides to bring him to Georgia.  
  
Jim knows the vague details of Georgia. Of a mother who he never really knew, but never really missed her much thanks in part to large and loving family network of grandparents and even great grandparents to make up for her absence. There was a childhood full of bright sunny days, bellies full of laughter, and grass stained slacks. Jim also knows that there was a woman named Jocelyn Darnell who he was a fool in love for, has seen pictures of a beautiful little girl named Joanna and even of those horrible months when he had no choice but to end his daddy’s suffering, lost the planet, and then threatened to throw up on a future starship captain. However, Georgia is something McCoy has always held close as the last piece to keep another person from knowing him that completely again.  
  
But at this point, he’s already signed on five years with the man in deep space and he wants Jim to properly met Joanna and his grandparents, for him to see all the stepping stones that led Leonard McCoy to that shuttle in Riverside.  
  
Home is full of ghosts for McCoy too, but unlike Jim’s his are full of life and love with only small pockets of turbulence. So, Gram opens what is now considered the summer place for the week before they are headed out to the black. It’s a two story white colonial house with a big wrap around porch and stables around the back that no longer keep horses and it all pulls McCoy heart in a half dozen directions.   
  
This was his daddy’s house, someplace that could have truly been his house if hadn’t Jocelyn thought it was too far out in the country – all of forty minutes outside of Atlanta.  
  
The place still smells like spiced rum and peach cobbler. And McCoy swears if he stands still long enough he can hear the laughter and tears of years spent growing up here. This place is wrapped up in so many different things for the first thirty minutes he doesn’t speak. He just walks through the familiar but strange house, measuring out his steps and trying not to be overwhelmed. And Jim is patient with him. Once Jim works out the layout out the younger man is off to his own devices as McCoy tries to make peace with this place because he wants it to be his again.  
  
The stars are coming out when Jim finds him sweeping the back porch more out of habit than anything else. “Figured you could use a drink,” he says handing McCoy a beer before falling back onto the porch swing. McCoy turns to watch him a moment, amazed the ease which Jim appears here or really how easily McCoy is able to add his presence in with the memories kept in the creaking floorboards. “Gonna join me or just stand there trying not to smile?”  
  
McCoy scowls out of principle before falling next to Jim on the porch swing. He presses himself close to the other body, just enjoying the reassurance of Jim’s body heat even if it makes it a bit too warm.  
  
“You grew up here,” is what Jim says, but McCoy hears the questions underneath it. The casual ask for McCoy to tell him tales of someone Jim could never imagine being as a child.  
  
McCoy takes a long sip of his beer as he considers where to start. Joanna isn’t due until tomorrow afternoon, so it’s just the two of them and his past until then. It might not be enough time, but it’s enough to find some place to start.   
  
“That,” he points to a large willow tree across the yard, “is the tree I feel out of when I was twelve and broke my arm after Mary Ellen turned me down for a date because I was too young.”  
  
It’s a safer memory, harmless in the grand scheme of things because the truth is that he’s too sober to get into the meatier ones just yet. They talk about nothing and everything for a few hours, the moon rising higher in the sky. There are words just on the tip of his tongue that he can feel loosening as the beer turns into rockers of bourbon. At some point one of them manages to order pizza and the box sits on the porch long after they have wandered into the yard to find a nice patch of grass out by the barn.  
  
McCoy can feel the world spinning around him, nudging him to let down his walls and let Jim see everything now before they fall too deeply. (Although truthfully he knows they are well passed the point of no return.)  
  
“I had a cousin, Emily, who lived with us for a while growing up,” he starts and Jim cranes his head to look at him. “At seventeen she got pregnant by some idiot who couldn’t be bothered to stay up to date with his contraceptives.” He likes the weight of Jim’s head on his chest as he speaks anchoring him to the ground as he finally cracks open the last of the baggage he carries.  
  
“Of course little Emily,” he says ignoring the fact that at the time he was two years Emily’s junior – but McCoy had always felt older than his years indicated, “decided to keep the thing and the fool who knocked her up at least had the sense to do her right. They got married, moved down the way – hell, they probably still live there now.” He looks down, meeting those earnest blue eyes that tell him that Jim doesn’t have a clue where this is going, but he remains ever patient. It is as if the kid knows this a something not unlike a confession and he needs to set the context just right. “Emily had dreams. She was going to go to New York and design clothes or some shit, she was good at it too. Well, as good as a seventeen year old can be, but instead she got stuck in this little town and wasted her life away with someone who didn’t really love her but felt obligated.” He draws the last word out like it’s the real cuss word in his speech.  
  
McCoy pauses for a long time, staring back at the stars. If he could move without disrupting the comfort of their positions he would take a drink, but he can’t so he just lets the alcohol in him simmer for a moment. “I didn’t want that to me. Wasn’t ever going to be tied down by some sense of obligation.” Jim shifts then, his clever mind probably putting together the pieces already. “So I went to Ole Miss at sixteen, and said I wasn’t going to look back. I was going to be the best damn doctor there ever was, everything else be damned. I was going to be better than that.”  
  
Jim reaches over putting his arm across McCoy’s shoulders silently asking him to continue, supporting him in the only way he really knows how. “Then I met Jocelyn in a public health class.” Jim does his best not to wince, but McCoy sees it and he really can’t blame Jim, but this is a story about the person he was so he has to continue, has to speak of Jocelyn and all that she was before things went sour. “She was beautiful, intelligent and ambitious…she seemed like a good match at the time. But hell, I was 19 and she was the first girl since Mary Ellen that I had time to look at.”  
  
He seems to drift in and out of conscious sentences and ramblings pulled from memories that are too close to the surface. They contain all the details he’s been afraid to offer up in the past because it kept Jim at a safer distance. “Found out she was pregnant the same week I got matched to my residency program, while knowing damn well it was going to be impossible to have a non-doctor girlfriend and be a resident.” He shakes his head. “But I was just damn Emily and my sense of obligation – and hell, it may not have been a part of the plan, but I wanted to be a dad. And when I saw that opportunity, I couldn’t let it pass because that was a part of me growing in her and life is too precious, love is too precious.”  
  
(And he was too young and too much of a fool.)  
  
“I proposed to her that summer right over there.” He points back over to the steps of the porch. For a moment he can see them standing there. Himself years younger and free of so much of the burden that his life would bring upon him, it was all gawky limbs and first love undercut with uncertainty, but the way she had looked at him…it still made the breath hitch in his throat. They had both cried then, happy tears, sliding perfectly together for just a moment before they jumped the damn shark.  
  
“Gave up my life for almost a decade for her. I kept telling myself it could work, despite all the bumps along the way.” It was the abridged version because Jim didn’t need to hear a recounting of all his sins, nor did he want to recount the shortcomings of something he desperately wanted to keep in the past even if the shadow of that failed love tainted every move he made. “For the longest time it was once I finish my residency, once Joanna is old enough for school…then Joce and I will go back to how we were because we were good together.”  
  
“But by the time…” he paused, he didn’t need to say those words, Jim knew that story of how his daddy got real sick just as he finished up his fellowship and was finally going to have more time. Still he needed to name those ghosts to dispel them. “I didn’t only not save my dad, I killed him…then I couldn’t save myself.” McCoy could feel his voice getting hoarse. He needs to distract himself. So he runs his fingers through Jim’s hair, it is good tactile reassurance that the words he’s speaking are the past and this is the present. “Got suspended from the hospital and it was just one nasty fight to break the camel’s back and she took everything. Hell, I gave her everything if that meant I could just get the hell away from it all.”  
  
It is too tense a moment, but rather than recoil from the intimacy of it, Jim moves into it. He rolls them, so his limbs frame McCoy looking down on him. “Not your bones.” There is a hint of a smile on his face and nothing but playfulness and love in his eyes. And mentally McCoy exhales saying ‘yes, this is where you belong.’  
  
He returns the gaze openly. “No, but I reckon those belong to you now.” He isn’t saying it, but it is the closest he will come to telling Jim that he is giving the other man everything he has left. And that if they start down this path failure isn’t an option because he knows he won’t survive that. “But, hell, I gave up so many pieces of myself for her, to be a good husband, a good father.”  
  
“You still are a good father.”  
  
McCoy rolls his eyes. He’s sure that Jim would say anything to stop him from tearing himself apart. And yet it doesn’t feel like he’s being placated. “I just can’t lose myself again like that.”  
  
Jim doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to say anything. McCoy has already said everything. The rest lies in silence. Jim just leans down, stealing McCoy’s lip into a slow searing kiss. Soon they fall completely into each other. And some distant part of his mind tells McCoy that maybe he’s been here before but he can’t seem to place it anymore as it’s rewritten with this moment.  
  
Eventually they move back toward the porch in a messy tangle of limbs. Jim moves with such determination, McCoy is sure now that Jim’s looking to rewrite every ghost in this house starting with Jocelyn and then try to patch up all the other cracks and holes along the way. Although skeptic at first when Jim drops to his knees in the same spot McCoy proposed and brings the doctor to a name-forgetting, toe curling orgasm right there he stops doubting. Stops thinking about anything else really.  
  
As he pulls away, tucking McCoy back in so they can finally head upstairs to the bedroom. He looks McCoy right in the eyes. “We’re going to be better than that, Bones.” There’s a quick kiss, a smirk before Jim is off and a new game to be had.  
  
They pick up Joanna the next day and slowly the house full of ghosts starts to feel more like a home. There’s laughter again, stolen kisses over attempts at breakfast, and the babbling of an excited nine year old girl who takes too much after her dad. And after Jim declares his dislike for broccoli at the dinner table that night, Joanna decides she likes him more than her step-dad (at least for the week).  
  
The three fill their time with all sorts of adventures, picnics, horseback riding, and just lazy afternoons down by the river. By the end of the week it feels like they have been doing this for years, that this has always been his family. It’s not quite a lifetime’s worth of memories, but he hopes that it’s at least five years worth as McCoy sees his baby girl off.  
  
And just as the pain of watching her go becomes too much, Jim places his arms around him, pulling into the present and forcing him to think of the happiness rather than the grief.  
  
“Joanna’s something else.”  
  
“She is,” he says agreeing with Jim. He is forever astounded that he and Jocelyn made that despite the fact he knows full well the biology behind it. McCoy feels the smile on his face grow as he shifts his gaze to Jim. “And you’re not so bad either.” Jim appears to blush under his gaze, understanding the full implication of the words.  
  
But just to be sure, McCoy is going to say them aloud anyway. It might be dangerous to define the relationship this early on, but he knows it’s what he wants and he would never ask more than Jim could give. “Think you could handle coming home to us?” It’s not let’s date or be monogamous and promise each other forever and ever after.  
  
Jim hesitates, the uncertainty clear. McCoy can see the words before the other man can utter them – the ‘but you were married and I always thought you were all old fashioned.’ And he doesn’t want to hear them because that’s a conversation that could go around in circles forever.  
  
“Joce and I were happy, we got pregnant, got married and then we weren’t…it’s too much of a burden, and really why ruin a good thing? At the end of the day, I’m the one you come home to and if I ask you were you’ve been you tell me, no lies, no deceptions, that’s all I need.” And that’s honestly all he feels able to give in return. “I wouldn’t ask you to be anyone else but who you are.”  
  
They don’t have to be boyfriends or any other funny label people might want to throw on them, they’ll just continue to be Jim and Bones (because even in his head he’s Bones now and that suits McCoy just fine.) In fact, it’s more than enough for him.


	13. Changed the Ending

**Year Ten – February 2268**  
The only time Jim is quick to wake up in the mornings was at the sound of warning claxons. Even if he is a morning person, he likes to lie there for a few moments and savor in the warmth of a bed first thing in the morning. Bones, on the other hand, is always ready to jolt out of bed the moment the alarm goes off and could force himself into cognitive thought instantly if needed, although he always did better after a cup of coffee. He claimed it was due to years running an emergency room, which often meant interrupted sleep patterns and no time to sprawl out in bed in the morning. It was only later through the insistence of Jocelyn and more recently Jim that he truly discovered the joys of staying in bed a few moments longer.  
  
However, this morning Bones isn’t next to him in bed, but he’s not alone.  
  
Still half asleep he can feel the long lines and smooth skin flush against his side. The woman, definitely a woman, is nuzzled up against him, her breathing slow and even indicating that she is still asleep. A lazy smile falls across his face as he turns into that body. She moves to accommodate him, to take him into her arms and he presses a kiss to the top of her head. Her hair isn’t yet in some elaborate formation and he likes her the best like this, no show, no games, she’s just Janice Rand.  
  
Jim watches her, waiting for the telltale signs that she is waking up – it’s not often a luxury he had with Bones, but he enjoys it. This whole watching someone wake up, it’s kind of awesome, in the true sense of the word because she’s so unguarded. In that moment he feels like he can read every thought racing across her mind (and yet he’s grateful that he can’t).  
  
“Morning,” he says when her blue eyes blink open to focus on him. Jim can’t help but lean forward and kiss her. The kiss is slow and easy. It carries everything he doesn’t need to say because he has never been all that good with words in moments like this, if only because they dominate so much of the rest of his life. Jim doesn’t need to tell her that she’s beautiful or that she looks like an angel right now, because he says it all in the way his arms wrap around her, how their bodies press together so effortlessly.  
  
They break the kiss and he laughs. He doesn’t remember the last time he laughed like he’s laughing right now, but he doesn’t say that. “You know, I don’t even remember when we fell asleep.” She had come by the night before for him to sign off on a few last minute requisitions and with Bones storming off he invited her to stay for a drink. Before she transferred off the ship in their first tour, he never would have extended the offer. Officers weren’t to fraternize with non-commissioned personnel and he took that seriously. However, Rand was recently promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade after officer school and three years as an ensign so she was considerably less off limits than she had been before. More importantly, after two years as his yeoman she gets him and that is what he wants.  
  
“We should get up.” Although he says the words, he doesn’t even pretend to move from their little cocoon. He can feel her heart beat against his skin, the swell of her breasts against his body and god how he’s missed that feeling. And it’s not just the breasts, although they are quite nice. “Bones is waiting.”  
  
She makes a face at him as he runs a hand through her hair. Janice turns into that touch placing a half-kiss, mostly a nibble on his hand. It’s playful and light. Bones might be that brilliant light through stained glass windows that enthralled him as a child, but Janice is that puppy he always wanted, content to curl up beside him on a bad day or eager to play when he needs that distraction.  
  
Jim knows he made a promise, took a vow – hell, he made Bones take that vow again, but it’s his story to write. So he has every right to change the ending. Janice wraps her fingers, calloused but still soft, around the pendants on his necklace and leads him on top of her into another kiss. If only Bones could see him now.  
  
Some small part of his brain is panicking, telling him this is wrong. While in other contexts having sex doesn’t break any rules, he knows he’s well past the lines of a consensual open relationship. However, he can’t be bothered to care about it, not when Janice is pulling his attention so completely and in turn giving him her full attention.  
  
And facts are facts. Bones left him this time around (and the time before that too). There is only so much Jim can take. He knows that and he knows that Bones knows it too. Jim Kirk needs people. For all the show of being independent and autonomous, he’s always needed people there to support him and make sure he doesn’t fuck it all up.  
  
They lay there consumed by each other for a few more minutes before Jim rolls away from her. There’s laughter in his bright blue eyes again. Every exhale seems to say ‘no one needs to know.’  
  
He slips out of the bed and finds a sock in the discarded piles of clothes. “Back into battle,” he says like it’s a joke. Only it isn’t because as he pulls back on his uniform and pants he feels like he’s putting on his armor to go find Bones. To whom he’ll swear that there was no one else, and hoping that will provoke some sort of reaction from Bones. But if can’t be possessed by Bones, he’ll take being welcomed into Janice’s arms again. Only sometimes he wishes for more than stolen moments. Or really to no have to feel like he’s stealing or doing anything wrong.  
  
No one would understand. Few people understood how his relationship with Bones worked before, to try and explain it now...well, it wouldn’t win him any friends. They had tried, created their little bubble where a new sort of family was created. He and Bones fit together so perfectly, but then the storm started. Each taking hits and Jim fought, like he fought for everything he held dear, trying to keep it, keep them together and whole. For over a decade he pushed and supported Bones without hesitation, but then Dramia happened, then a lot of things happened after that and he started making conscious, deliberate mistakes.  
  
“I love him, a part of me will always love him.” He’s not sure if he’s talking to himself or to Janice who sits perched on the bed watching him dress. “I just…he doesn’t belong here, you know?”  
  
“If you’re looking for me to validate what’s happening, I’m not going to do that.” He smiles at that, Janice has always been a no nonsense sort of woman. “But I know you, Jim, and you haven’t been happy in a long time.”  
  
He shakes his head. She isn’t wrong, but is he willing to admit that to himself? “I belong in space, Bones doesn’t, but I want to belong with him too.” A few years ago that might have been a scary admission, but right now that’s the least scary thing he can face.  
  
Their second five-year mission is ending in a handful of months. Neither he nor Bones are talking about what happens next, at least not to each other. Jim has seen the confidential data packs to Bones from Starfleet Medical and he knows they aren’t just reports, but job offers and praise. Essentially they carry everything Bones wants. For his part, he’s been talking to Pike about his next tour, already dreaming of the sort of refits and upgrades he wants to see his girl go through to make her better. (He certainly won’t admit that she might not be the best ship in the fleet anymore because she is very much his ship and no one is going take that way from him.)  
  
“And I feel like we’ve been holding onto something that doesn’t exist for months now.” Jim sighs and falls back on the bed. He turns to look at her. He is hiding nothing. “What can I do?”  
  
Janice reaches out for him. “Come back to bed, Jim.” He’s already peeling off the boots he just put on and slipping back into bed next to her.  
  
Jim wraps himself around her or maybe she wraps her arms around him, but the end result is that they are holding each other. “I promise I won’t lie to you,” he whispers into her hair. His eyes are closed tight, squeezing out the tears he wants to cry because he feels like his heart is pulled in a million different places at once. At least Janice belongs in space and for this morning that’s enough.  
  
He’s not sure how long they spend lying there and he doesn’t care. It’s not even sexual at this point, it’s just comfort. The longer he stays the less he feels like he’s drifting, the clearer he starts to see things. Jim knows what he needs to do.  
  
Even if that means broken hearts, he is going to get what he needs.  
  
They kiss again, slow and gentle. He doesn’t think of how his kisses with Bones used to be like this. All he thinks about is the fact that she’s here with him right now and how she seems to belong in a bed that’s not hers. But he needs to be needed, needs to be in love with someone who will make sure that he’ll keep coming back because he doesn’t want to burn out his like parents did.  
  
“Maybe I could be in love with someone like you.”  
  
It’s a whisper and he doesn’t expect a reply, so she doesn’t give one. Then it’s off to go find Bones again.


	14. Until We Meet Again

**Year one – Spring 2258**  
When he wakes up the next morning a part of him thinks it’s wrong to feel this happy. Hundreds of people he has seen around campus for the past three years are dead, a whole planet is gone, but damn it if the sight of Jim Kirk in his bed clinging onto him like he’s a buoy isn’t a fantastic feeling.  
  
McCoy shifts in the bed as much as he can without disrupting the man next to him. It’s obvious to him how much the past couple of days, weeks even, have taken out of the kid. At least the Academy had the sense to lighten up on their regulations in the aftermath. It’s the absolute earliest the fourth class has ever received the carry on, but it’s not unwarranted. There’s been a huge loss and McCoy’s medical training tells him that people need to be able to process what’s happening and not have to worry about bracing up or double timing it to class even if some of them still do.  
  
All of those traditions and regulations will slip back into their life eventually, but McCoy isn’t too worried about them at the moment. Right now, he’s fully enthralled with the fact that Jim is right here next to him. He can feel every breath and every little thought that causes his extremities to twitch. Although he doesn’t wonder what Jim is dreaming about because of all the things that the world asks of the younger man and all the things they will ask of him in the days to come, McCoy thinks he deserves something that’s just his.  
  
He can feel Jim start to stir under his intense gaze. It’s slow like syrup, the real stuff not the replicated crap, creeping from a bottle. McCoy has always suspected that he felt something more for Jim than friendship and the silent gratitude for helping him get over the divorce and learning how to live again. While he knows what it is in his gut, he doesn’t want to name it just yet.  
  
Because the truth is, he’s pretty sure he’s been waiting for someone like Jim to lurch into his life and start to patch up all the wounds the world left for him before he even had most of those wounds.   
  
McCoy leans forward and grabs Jim’s lips into a kiss. Perhaps in the unending days to come he’ll be bolder and it won’t just be lips, but limbs, or nipples, and maybe his penis, but right now lips are just fine.  
  
Even half-asleep Jim responds to that kiss, moving into it. His body coming more alive and McCoy laughs deep in the back of his throat at the thought that he’s kissing Jim back to life. It’s almost like he’s some prince charming come to save the princess. Which is appropriate because this moment doesn’t feel real. He still thinks that at any moment, he’s going to really wake up and be gravely disappointed.  
  
Jim moves over him, wrapping sleep heavy limbs around his warm body. As ways to spend a morning McCoy thinks there could be worse. There’s morning breath and stiff muscles, but there’s also him and Jim in his bed with the rest of the world feeling a lot further away.  
  
McCoy’s alarm goes off again. This one telling him that he really does need to be out of bed. He presses a chaste kiss to the tip of Jim’s nose before reaching over to turn it off. “I have to be at the hospital in thirty.” McCoy can see that Jim is trying to think up some excuse or some line to sully this moment, but McCoy shakes his head. “Don’t say anything, let’s just leave it at this.”  
  
He leans forward and kisses Jim again using the kiss as a distraction to flip them over so Jim isn’t pinning him to the mattress anymore. McCoy might not be a tactical genius, but he has a few tricks up his sleeves.  
  
“I’ll see you tonight, okay?” he says breaking off the kiss and slipping out of bed in one fluid motion. Jim just nods, his gaze his hazy, probably still partially asleep and that causes McCoy to smile.  
  
“You should do that more often.” Jim says before he settles back into the bed to watch McCoy dress and scurry off to the hospital. He doesn’t have to be anywhere for another hour or two. And really Jim’s not sure he would rather be anywhere else.  
  
  
 **Year Ten –June 2268**  
Maybe it’s the coward’s way out, but Jim can’t handle a goodbye anymore than he could handle another fight. He needs this to be clean – or at least as clean as it can be considering he’s still often unsure where the lines are between the two of them.  
  
He is standing in their room. Most of his stuff has already been packed up and moved into storage. What remains that doesn’t belong to Bones fits carefully into a duffle bag. It’s the same duffle bag that all of his stuff arrived in when he started at the academy. It seems only appropriate that now when he’s walking away from Bones he would leave with the same amount of things he started with.  
  
Jim looks at the note once more, reading it through to make sure it says what he means for it to say. (Not that it could ever really say everything he means for it to, but hopefully it says enough.)

> _Bones –_
> 
> Look, it’s not about another compromise. We’ve both compromised too much over the past five years. I need you to do what you want to do, just as much as I need to do what I’m going to do and not feel guilty about it. We said we wouldn’t give and take until we didn’t recognize the people we’ve become, but that’s what happened. Take the job at Medical, help the next generation save the world or at least keep together stupid officers who should know better.
> 
> But know that you’re not the only one who is hurting, Bones. I just…I don’t know what else I could have done, what else I can do. You really never saw how bad things got, how Dramia changed everything – only that’s not it. I could have handled that, we could have handled that, well, maybe we could have. I just don’t know how to rescue you from this.
> 
> You say you don’t need saving, but you have needed saving since you never really came back from that planet. No matter how hard I tried and I tried, with Joanna, with everything. All I could do, all I can do, is love you.
> 
> We could fight, we could pretend it will be okay, or I could go my own way and you go yours. I love you, Leonard, I’ll always love you. We just aren’t good for each other right now. So, go, create the next generation of medical officers and be with your girl and I’ll be with mine.
> 
> Until we meet again,  
> Jim

  
He sets the note on the bedside table and takes a deep breath. There is one last thing to do. With shaky hands he unclips the chain from around his neck and slips off the ring. He will keep the tags, but he needs to let this go. So, he sets the ring down right next to the note in the span of an inhale.  
  
Jim doesn’t let that breath go until he hears the hiss of the door closing behind him. It’s over; it’s done.  
  
  
 **Year One – Spring 2258**  
As predicted, order is restored a few days later. The fourth years still have their carry on, and many of the cadets who fought and survived the battle of Vulcan have received their commissions so it’s a different sort of order, but it’s still order. For one, McCoy no longer outranks Jim, not that it ever mattered to him, but it marks a noticeable difference with Jim. He’s a lot more open, less guarded and calmer at least around him. And McCoy’s not honestly sure if that has to do with the number of times they’ve head sex in the past couple of days or the commission.  
  
Knowing Jim the answer is probably both, but McCoy doesn’t spend too much time thinking about it. Not when he has a dissertation to finish up so he can get that damn PhD to add to his name and be fully qualified to serve as CMO of the Enterprise. He also has a few things to get in order before he ships out for five years in the black, which is still something that if he pauses long enough makes him wonder what he is thinking.  
  
One of those things is the bouncing blonde on the other side of the screen. Her eyes that same changing hazel as her father’s, but far more filled of joy and unburdened by the weight of the world. Of course at ripe age of nine, she shouldn’t really have too many burdens.  
  
“Daddy you look happy!” She nearly squeals clapping her hands together.  
  
McCoy can’t help but smile at her excitement. Yes, there’s still sadness and loss, but there’s happiness too. For all that he couldn’t save, he did save some – hell, they saved the Earth. "I am,” he says after a few moments just content to sit there and watch her. “I’m going to be seeing you in a few weeks, how about that?”  
  
“But it’s not the holidays, daddy.” She squints at him. Too damn smart for her own good, but he would expect nothing less. He might still feel bitter toward Jocelyn, but she did right by their girl. “Is this because you and Captain Kirk saved the world?”  
  
He laughs, shaking his head. “A little bit, although I think Captain Kirk had more of hand in it than I did.” Although he knows that Jim would have a very different version of that story. “I’m going to be going back to space soon and I want to see you before I go.”  
  
Joanna nods. They fall into an easy conversation in which she wants a tall tale of what happened on the ship. Much of that is classified still and even if it weren’t, he wouldn’t tell her the whole truth anyway. She’s much too young for that.  
  
“Bones?” Comes the voice from the small living room of his apartment.  
  
“Is that Jim?” Joanna asks excitedly. Of course it’s Jim because only Jim would let himself into McCoy’s quarters – not that McCoy has ever minded (and not like he would ever let Jim know that).  
  
“Why yes it is.”  
  
“Is he going to come to Georgia too?” For a moment McCoy really wonders how much she imbues in that question and how much he might be projecting. Clearly his girl is smart enough to realize that Jim is who makes him happy, but she’s probably too young to truly understand why.  
  
“I think he might.”  
  
“Can I say hi to him?”  
  
“Sure, just let me call him over.” He says to Joanna before turning his head toward the living room and raising his voice. “Hey, Jim, get over here, my girl wants to say hello to you.”  
  
Jim enters the room and punches McCoy on the shoulder by ways of greeting while his girl his watching. At least the kid has some sense to him. “Hey there, peanut, your dad says we finally get to meet in a few weeks. I have to say I’m looking forward to it!”  
  
“Jim, I’m nine,” she says with a whine and a roll of her eyes. McCoy expects that’s going to be trouble in a few years, but also knows that he’ll be light years away for the worst of it. It’s both a blessing and a curse he supposes because while he doesn’t really want to deal with a teenage girl this one is his. “But it will be pretty cool to meet Captain Kirk…some of the girls in my class call you Captain Awesome.”  
  
That gets a laugh out of Jim. McCoy refrains on principal alone, because he knows that for the next couple of weeks he’s going to have to put up with Jim calling himself Captain Awesome.  
  
McCoy glances at the chrono on the wall they are expected in the officer’s mess for dinner in a few minutes. “Alright, JoJo, we need to get going.”  
  
Like the good girl she was raised to be, she says goodbye and gives her daddy her love, to which he does the same.  
  
“Say Goodbye, Jim.”  
  
“Goodbye Jim.” How Jim manages to say those words without immediately laughing is lost on the two McCoys who both lose it. Although Joanna goes first and that breaks any resolve McCoy might have left.  
  
For Jim, the laughter is clear in his eyes as he reaches forward, cuts the connection with Joanna and they kiss. It’s simple like they have been doing this for years, even although it’s only been a few days. It’s then that McCoy knows this is the start of something far greater than him.

**Author's Note:**

> Credit where credit's due/references: Star Trek and Gene Roddenberry who without this none of this could happen. A fantastic YouTube comment that brought up the thought that Norbert Leo Butz would make a great Kirk if they ever made Star Trek: The Musical (seriously someone do it), The Last 5 Years, astrophysics in general, Robert Frost, Christopher Marlowe, Sir Walter Raleigh, easily dozens of other fan fics I have read and have become part of my head canon, Firefly (specifically the commentary for Shindig), Mal's final speech in Serenity, King James and George Villiers, Win A Date With Tad Hamilton, a concept from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Grey's Anatomy, the final scene in Mulan, and endless hours spent googling all sorts of ridiculous things like the ring dance or lizard diseases.


End file.
